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'1 






Myths and Legends 
Beyond Our Borders 



BY CHARLES M. SKINNER 

Myths and Legends of Our Own Land 
Illustrated. Two volumes. i2mo. Buck- 
ram, $3.00; half calf or half morocco, $6.00 

Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders 

Illustrated. i2mo. Buckram, ^1.50; half 
calf or half morocco, ^3.00 

Myths and Legends of North America 
The above three volumes in a box. Buckram, 
;^4.5o; half calf or half morocco, ^9.00 

With Feet to the Earth 

New Editio7ty Enlarged 
Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, ornamental, |i.So 

Do-Nothing Days 
Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, ornamental, ^1.50 

Do-Nothing Days Library. The above two 
volumes in a box. Cloth, ornamental, ^3.00; 
half calf or half morocco, $6.00 




Myths d-Lesends ^ ^1m 
Beyond M 
Our Borders ^ 



Charles M.Skinner^^ 



$95 



(« 








^5 



■5.116' 



Copyright, 1898 

BY 

J. B. LippiNcoTT Company 




n^O COPIES RECEIVIO. 



SHE TO WHOM I OFFER THESE LEGENDS 
IS IN HER ART SO CONVINCING, SO 
POETIC, IN HER LIFE SO KIND, THAT I 
HESITATE TO PRESENT A WORK THAT 
MIGHT VEX HER BY ITS FAULTS. YET 
IN HER CHARITY I KNOW SHE WILL 
NOT LOOK FOR THEM. HENCE, I 

DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MAUD 



preface 



THE kind reception given to the author's book 
of legends pertaining to the United States 
has been an incentive to continue the w^ork in the 
same field, and herewith is offered a volume of tra- 
dition from Canada and Mexico, thus covering 
the North American continent. A need of brevity 
has made it advisable to keep to the method fol- 
lowed in *' Myths and Legends of Our Own Land," 
of assembling traditions that attach to places, rather 
than attempting to set forth the almost exhaustless, 
always verbose, and sometimes childish folk-lore 
of the aborigines. Simple people, red people, and 
habitants, not readers, not logicians, not examiners, 
accept these tales from their old men and treasure 
them. Others may find amusement in them, and 
perhaps profit ; for, ingenuous as they are, they 
sometimes symbolize high truths. 



WnW of Contents 

Canada page 

Explorers and Aborigines 17 

Myths of Creation, Heaven, and Hell 22 

Glooskap at Menagwes 34 

The Dogs of Clote Scaurp .35 

The Missions 37 

A Few Monsters 44 

Some Names 49 

Troubles on the St. Lawrence 55 

American Elephants 63 

Hidden Gold 66 

How one Bear lost his Life 72 

The Isle of Demons 74 

The Figure in Smoky Hut 77 

The Shadow of Holland Cove 81 

The Friar of Campobello 83 

Two Melicite Victories 85 

The Flame Sloop of Caraquette 88 

The Acadians and Evangeline 91 

The Tolling off Gaspe 94 

The Ride to Death 96 

The General with an Ear 100 

The Defence of St. John loi 

Brother and Sister in Battle 105 

The Golden Dog 107 

The Grave in the Cellar no 

The Mountain and the See 113 

The Sin of Father St. Bernard 114 

Larouche had his Wish 118 

The Heart of Frontenac 120 

The Devil Dance on Orleans 122 

9 



Contents 

PAGE 

The Defiance at Elora 126 

The Miracles of Sainte Anne 129 

Tadousac Bell at Midnight 1 34 

The Bell of Caughnawaga 137 

The Massacre at Bic 139 

The Doom of Mamelons 141 

The Revenge of Hudson 143 

Kenen's Sacrifice 146 

The Calling of Zoe de Mersac 149 

The Headless Deserters 153 

The Devil's Head 155 

Father Jacques's Vengeance 157 

The Bonnech^re Affair 161 

He went back for his Gun 165 

Kwasind, the Strong 166 

The Curse of Success 168 

The Death of Wahwun 172 

The Devil's Half-Acre 174 

Medicine Hat 176 

Ghost Woman at the Blood Camp 178 

The Blackfoot Eden 180 

The Wicked Wife 183 

Fourth of July at Yale 185 

Death of the Great Beaver 187 

Why the Mountains virere made 189 

The Place of Dead Men 191 

How the Indians became Red 193 

The Pool of Destruction . 194 

Yehl, the Light-Maker 196 

The Shelter of Edgecumbe 198 

How Selfishness was punished 199 

The Ghost of Sitka Castle 202 

A Fatal Rivalry 204 

Bad Boys of Na-as River 207 

The Baffled Ice God 208 



Contents 

flneifCO PAGE 

White Visitors before Columbus 213 

The White God . 217 

Spiritual Guidance 225 

Eagle, Snake, and Cactus • 231 

Told in Yucatan 233 

Our Lady of Guadalupe 239 



Our Lady of the Remedies 242 

Some other Miracles 244 

The Picture and the Storm 246 

The Mischievous Cocktail 247 

The Councillors of Lagos 250 

The Humpback of Colima 253 

Why Cholula Pyramid was built 255 

The Ark on Colhuacan 257 

Making the Sun 259 

ThePopulVuh 261 

Fathers of the Miztecs 264 

The Willing Captive 266 

The Death-Dance of Tezcatlipoca 268 

Other Wiles of the Evil God 272 

The Aztec TannhSuser 274 

Huitzilopochtli 276 

The War-God takes a Bride 279 

£1 Dorado 280 

The Dwarf's House 283 

Why Valdez bought Prayers 285 

Father Jose*s Love 288 

The Devil in Prison 292 

The Alligator-Tree 294 

Evil Spirits in the Springs 296 

Devils and Doubloons 299 

Incidents of War 301 

Gambling Away the Sun 304 

Huascar's Prophecy ^ , 305 

II 



I 
Contents j 

pagb; 

The Medal and the Orchid 307 

The Honest Muleteers 310 |l 

Aiguerre's Fire 313' 

The Amazons 315J 

Bolivar at Caracas 316! 



Jlliigtrations 

Chapultepec Frontispiece 

The Church at Tadousac Page 134 

Medicine Hat, Assiniboia " 176 

Popocatepetl . ** 229 



Canatia 



I 



Myths and Legends Beyond 
Our Borders 

EXPLORERS AND ABORIGINES 

CANADA, from its earliest settlement, has been 
to most white Americans a dark, cool land 
of mystery. Only since its railroads joined East 
and West together, since the frontier settlements of 
the last generation developed into cities, since the 
farming districts of the prairie began to draw their 
hardy populace from older lands, has it become 
known to our southern millions that it is a coun- 
try differing in little from their own, the same in 
speech and spirit, akin in laws and faith and man- 
ners. The history of the republic and that of the 
colony were the same down to the time of the Revo- 
lution, yet Canada's northern position, its settle- 
ment by the French, the individuality of its native 
tribes, its exploration by missionaries, its imagined 
remoteness, gave rise to tales that, while not veri- 
fied, had reason for being. The history of the 
province is full of romance. The legends that 
have grown from it compel the attention no more 
than the tales of conquest, diplomacy, daring, and 
difficulty, and those new reports of wealth on the 

2 17 



Myths and Legends 

Yukon. Many of the unwritten tales run counter 
to record, others so merge in it that it is impossible 
to separate them, but, as they have character, ro- 
mance, humor, or quaintness, they deserve to be 
saved from the assaults of commercialism and com- 
monplace. 

Long before the time of Cabot, Cartier, Roberval, 
Champlain, and Hudson, Canada was known, in 
Norse tradition, and it is claimed that Basque and 
Breton fishermen caught cod on the Grand Banks 
a century before Columbus's day. Canada was the 
first part of America to be discovered, and Bjarne 
Herjulfsson, son of an Icelander who had moved to 
Greenland, reached Cape Breton in the year 986, 
while trying to join his father in his new home. 
Fourteen years later Leif Ericsson, son of the Ice- 
landic jarl, Eric the Red, tried to find this new land. 
It is not known exactly where he went ashore, but 
Labrador was first sighted : Helluland, he called 
it ; '^ a country of no advantages." Next he passed 
Markland, with its flat beaches and its woods : Nova 
Scotia ? And Vinland, which is any place you 
please, was last explored. Somewhere, possibly on 
the Penobscot, was the city of crystal and silver, 
Norumbega, Norombega, Norumbeque, and may- 
be Aranbega, Arambek, and Lorembek. New- 
foundland, oldest of the British colonies, was one 
of the first regions that seemed to promise wealth, 
for it did not take the explorers long to find 
that its waters swarmed with fish. Indeed, the 
18 



Beyond Our Borders 

Portuguese name of Bacalhaos, long borne by New- 
foundland, means codfish. Nor was Labrador 
without its promise in the eyes of those same Por- 
tuguese, for the name, which is in their tongue, 
means laborer. (It is not Le Bras d'Or, the arm 
of gold, for Cape Breton has its Bras d'Or.) " King 
Emanuel, having heard of the high trees growing 
in the northern countries, and having seen the abo- 
rigines, who appeared so well qualified for labor, 
thought he had found a new slave-coast like that 
which he owned in Africa, and dreamed of the tall 
masts he would cut and the men-of-war he would 
build from the forests." Mistaken man ! The 
power of the Latin races in North America was 
brief, and it left few marks in comparison with that 
of the Anglo Saxons who so soon possessed the 
land and who almost alone have made it what it 
is. Though racked by frequent wars in those dark 
times, the country advanced a little after every 
struggle, and the builders of air-castles, the founders 
of visionary empires, were jostled aside if they 
loitered in the way of progress. 

The Indians themselves throw little light on their 
own history, and if facts were originally embodied 
in their fantastic myths, the forms of these parables 
have in almost every case concealed the meanings. 
That in the days of unwritten history there were 
great political and military movements there is no 
doubt, — movements that to the red dwellers in this 
land were as momentous as the wars and changes 
19 



Myths and Legends 

in Europe were to the Greeks and Romans. We 
have reason to believe that men existed here long 
before the last of the North American glaciers, and 
that they were driven toward the warm belt by- 
its advance ; that there are relations between the 
Alaskans and the Aztecs ; that the Canadian Indians 
drove the mound-builders southward six hundred 
years ago. The ** great horned snake" of Ontario, 
against which they battled, may have been the snake- 
shaped forts of these mound-makers, like those 
remaining in the Ohio Valley. Their man-god, 
Michabo, or Hiawatha, '^ drives the serpents to 
the south." On Moose Mountain, Assiniboia, are 
cairns with lines of stones radiating from them, the 
early work of mound-builders, or imitations of it by 
their conquerors, who relate that the stones were 
placed there by the spirit of the winds. 

Various theories as to the origin of the Indians 
account for them (i) as autochthonous, or self-cre- 
ated : a legitimate theory, since the geologic age of 
this country qualifies it to have been not merely the 
original land of the Indians, but the cradle of the 
human race ; (2) as members of the lost tribes of 
Israel ; (3) as survivors of the sunken continent of 
Atlantis ; (4) as Phoenicians ; (5) as Carthaginians ; 
(6) as Greeks ; (7) as Chinese, who reached these 
shores in 458 a.d. ; and (8) as Mongols, who ar- 
rived in the thirteenth century. The latter theory, 
which would have assumed the peopling of a vast 
continent in a couple of hundred years, is of course 
20 



Beyond Our Borders 

absurd, but an identity of certain Canadian and cer- 
tain Asiatic tribes is at least suggested by likeness in 
their beliefs and customs, such as their tribal work 
and government, traditions, religious faiths, supersti- 
tions, way of regarding women, treatment of guests, 
sacrifices, burials, funerals, the wearing of feathers, 
use of bark utensils, form of weapons, dog feasts, 
games, emblems, pipe-smoking, serpent-worship, 
serpent-charming, sacred animals, dances, figures of 
oratory, and monosyllabic speech. In their free, 
sane life the physical adequacy of the Indians should 
have been maintained, and there is no reason to sup- 
pose that as a family they have deteriorated, in spite 
of the allegation that in the Ontario government 
park, at Rondeau, Lake Erie, the skeletons of well- 
proportioned men seven and one-half feet high have 
been unearthed. The later history of the red race is 
too familiar to recount, and it is most sad. When 
some royal commissioners in eastern Canada had the 
audacity to ask a native chief what claim his people 
had to the country, he replied only, ** There lie 
our grandfathers ; there lie our fathers ; there lie 
our children." To the first settlers the idea that 
the savage could be a creature of sentiment was 
preposterous, and that he should wish to hold his 
ancestral woods and fields no less so. Bitter has 
been the strife that has driven him from his old 
estate. He is an outcast in his own land, a victim 
of wrongs uncounted and cruelties as dire as those 
with which he has retaliated on the aggressors. 

21 



Myths and Legends 

But he is not what so many have painted him. In 
many of his traditions it will be seen that he has 
a moral sense as keen as any one^s, and courage to 
live to it; that he is a man. 



MYTHS OF CREATION, HEAVEN, AND 
HELL 

BELIEFS touching death, the spirit-world, and 
the hereafter vary with the different tribes 
of Canada, and some of them have undergone 
change from contact with missionaries. Often the 
merging-point of the old and the new belief is 
impossible to descry, while in the case of the 
teacher who came across the Pacific in a copper 
canoe, preached morality to the shore tribes, was 
crucified, arose, resumed preaching, and was after- 
ward obeyed, we find a blending of the Christ his- 
tory and the Hiawatha legend. 

The Nootkas in their version of this tale do 
not include either crucifixion or resurrection. On 
the contrary, they assume that the killing of the 
teacher was a good thing, because they secured his 
copper canoe and paddles, and the use of copper 
they learned at that time. Some of the great 
wooden images in their houses represent this 
teacher who promised a future life. Sheets of 
copper with eyes painted on them have been seen 
at Fort Rupert, and are thought to symbolize the 
sun. They are regarded with peculiar reverence. 

22 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

In a Chippewayan legend the first country was 
that through which the Copper-Mine River flows, 
and the ground was strewn with copper. A bird 
created this country, — a vast bird whose glance was 
lightning, and thunder the shaking of his wings. 
He created the earth by touching the primal ocean. 
The first men wore out their feet with walking and 
their throats with eating. 

Some pretty traditions have grown from the im- 
planting of a new faith in imaginative soil. The 
loose quartz crystals found near Quebec are said to 
be Christ's tears, wept upon the earth for the sins 
of its people. The northern lights, which among 
ungospelled tribes are the spirits of dead friends 
dancing, the brighter the merrier, have turned to 
angels, throwing down snow to cool the parched 
in hell. An Indian who was discovered on all- 
fours in a wood near Wardsville, moving softly 
over the snow, was at first suspected of mischief; 
but h^ was only waiting to see the deer fall on their 
knees before the Great Spirit, as he had heard they 
did on Christmas night. 

Biblical teaching and native myth are queerly 
mixed in the Ojibway tale of the beginning of the 
race, which they say occurred at Torch Lake, or 
Lac du Flambeau. The Great Spirit had made 
the vegetation about this water, and was surprised 
when he saw a creature wallowing through the 
reeds in the form since taken by men, but covered 
with shining scales like a fish. This object went 
23 



Myths and Legends 

mooning about in such a mournful fashion that 
the Manitou, taking pity on him, made a woman, 
also covered with scales, and breathed life into 
her. He told her to wander by the shore, and 
presently she would find something she would be 
sure to like. The man found her while she slept, 
and, rousing her, took her to walk, showing where 
roots and herbs grew that were good for food. 
Her name, she told him, was Mani (Mary ?). 
He took her to his spacious lodge and went with 
her through his garden, warning her not to eat 
fruit from a certain tree that grew there. When 
she was alone, a handsome young Indian emerged 
mysteriously from the tree and urged her to pick 
and eat the fruit, adding that it made fine pre- 
serves. She ate, and persuaded her husband to 
do the same. The scales fell from their bodies, 
and they drew back among the bushes in shame. 
Then Gitche Manitou drove them away, so that 
they could no longer eat fruits^ but had to live 
on meat. In his wandering the first man found 
a great book that began speaking to him. It told 
him to do so many things that he could not remem- 
ber half of them, and he threw it away, where- 
upon he found on the earth a book in sign lan- 
guage that covered only two squares of bark. This 
sign-book gave no laws, but told much about foods 
and remedies, so that in a few years his children be- 
came not only hunters but medicine-men. Manitou 
repented his anger and restored the people to his 
24 



Beyond Our Borders 

love again, ordering his own son, or agent, Mani- 
bozho, to make a paradise for them in the west, 
where the world ended. It is a beautiful country, 
and there, when they die, they battle and hunt no 
more, but live on sweet, shining mushrooms, play 
on the flute and drum, and dance all day. To 
reach this land they travel the Milky Way, the 
path of souls. They need bows or guns on the 
journey, but none after they reach paradise. If on 
the way they stop to eat a strawberry that a tempter 
offers to them, they fall from the bright bridge and 
become frogs as they touch the earth. 

Among the Blackfeet the sand-hills of the plains, 
near the United States boundary, were the shadow- 
land, the ghost-place, the limbo of recently de- 
parted souls. Our shadows are held to be actual 
souls. Dead persons sometimes live again as ani- 
mals, and owls are the ghosts of medicine-men. 
In the Red River country the dead hover about in 
the form of eagles, but some of the Siwash believe 
they take the forms of birds more foul of habit, 
that lurk over the place of their demise for four 
days. In order to keep them at a distance the sur- 
vivors burn old moccasins that make a fetid smoke. 
Some of the far northwestern Indians believed that 
hell was in the ice, for it is natural that the cold of 
the Arctic winter should, to them, stand for the 
extremest suffering, but some of the Eskimos put 
the place of future punishment beneath the sea, 
and heaven above, with plenty of walrus. Their 
25 



Myths and Legends 

hell IS like Dante's : of successive cellars, and the 
deeper go the damned the colder it grows. The 
wickedest go to the bottom. The Eskimos, by the 
way, are advanced beyond certain primitive beliefs, 
and the new woman is no stranger to them. The 
Sun was a youth to whom the Great Spirit gave 
wings that he might chase the Moon, — a winged 
girl. Aoguta and her daughter Sedna are among 
their chief deities. The Hudson Bay Eskimos tell 
us that the first man sprang to being in a beautiful 
valley, and married the only girl on earth, after he 
had picked her as a flower. They were the parents 
of all mankind. The Assiniboins believed that 
hell was in the Great Selkirk glacier. The un- 
speakable majesty of this ice mass and its moun- 
tain setting to them was merely dreadful. The 
Chippewas held that the wicked were immersed to 
their chins in water, and that they could not leave 
it, although, to add to their discomfiture, the happy 
hunting-grounds were in their view. 

Like the Greeks, many of the Indians peopled 
the woods, hills, and waters with gods and spirits, 
who were amiable or devilish according to their 
environment and according to the nature of the 
imagination that evoked them. They personified 
many of the stars and mountains ; a comet was a 
winged creature breathing fire ; the morning star 
was the Early Riser ; the Dipper was the Seven 
Persons ; the moon was the Night Red Light ; the 
Milky Way was the Wolf Road. Spirits of places 
26 



Beyond Our Borders 

sometimes spoke to those who asked advice of 
them, and while La Salle's boat, the Griffin, was in 
process of building at Cayuga Creek, he went to 
Niagara to consult the oracle at Devil's Hole. A 
voice spoke from it warning him to abandon his 
voyage on pain of death by treachery. He met 
that fate. The Nipissings were stigmatized by the 
Jesuits as ** the sorcerers," and Lake Nipissing was 
beset by devils and magicians. 

The mountain in British Columbia, or Washing- 
ton, on which life was preserved during the great 
flood is impossible of identification, but deluge le- 
gends pertain to several of the peaks. The Takul- 
lies say that the earth-builder was a muskrat, which, 
diving here and there in the universal ocean, brought 
up mud, and spat it out in one place until an island 
was formed, which grew to be the earth. After it 
had been peopled a fire swept over it, destroying 
all the surface save one mountain that held a deep 
cave, and in this hid one man and one woman until 
the earth was cool again, when they emerged and 
repeopled it. This myth is oddly repeated in 
Paraguay and Bolivia. Alaskan Kaiganees say that 
the big canoe in which a good man was saved in 
the time of a great flood rested on a mountain just 
back of Howkan, and one old fellow claimed, a 
dozen or two of years ago, that he had a piece of 
its bark anchor-rope. The crow that flew out of 
the ark still nests in the crater of Mount Edgecumbe, 
near Sitka, and catches whales. On Forester Island 
27 



Myths and Legends 



i 



they say that towns were destroyed by pest and fire 
for their wickedness, and that a woman who looked 
back in the act of flight was turned to stone, her 
lodge and that of her brother being also changed 
to rock at the same moment, and you see them in 
the river to-day, — warnings to obey the Great Spirit 
when he speaks. A legend of a collision of the 
earth with a fiery dragon (a comet ?) is found among 
many of the Algonquins. 

Among the Dog-Rib Indians of the Barren 
Grounds there is a belief in one Chapawee, a mis- 
chief-maker who plunged the earth into a long 
period of darkness by catching the sun in a noose 
and tying it fast, so that it could not rise above 
the horizon. Does this typify the Arctic winter ? 
After a time he sent animals to gnaw the snare 
asunder, and they were burned to ashes. Does this 
clothe in parable the outbreak of a volcano, or the 
dissipation of the ice in the Arctic summer ? Be- 
like it is neither, for many of the traditions are but 
old wives' tales, without a meaning. Men, meas- 
urably civilized, lived in North America twenty 
thousand years ago ; and some of the myths like the 
foregoing are thought to preserve the memory of 
the last great glacier, that covered the continent 
down to the fortieth parallel, burying beneath it 
the cities of this ancient people. 

One of the traditionary characters among the 
western tribes, from the Blackfeet to the Aleuts of 
Alaska, was Old Man. He varies in power and 
28 



Beyond Our Borders 

importance in different parts of the country, but 
among the Aleuts he has many of the attributes 
of the Great Spirit, and is a secondary god. He 
played a Cadmus part, dropping stones on the earth, 
that presently sprang up in human form. Some 
that he flung into the air became birds, those that 
he cast to a distance were quadrupeds and serpents, 
and those that he tossed into the sea turned to 
fish. Thus was the world peopled. The Black- 
feet say that Old Man acquired a wife, a daughter, 
and a son-in-law. The latter was not worth much. 
There arrived in the lodge a young man who had 
sprung from the blood of some game they were 
preparing for the pot, and this young one and Old 
Man attempted to stop the thieving and abuse of 
the son-in-law. They could not, and as this ob- 
jectionable person had an especially violent tantrum 
on a certain occasion, the good ones shot him dead, 
and there were peace and plenty afterward. All 
of which has been construed as a day and night 
myth, a summer and winter myth, a sunshine and 
storm myth, a famine and plenty myth. Maybe. 
While some ethnologists claim that the Micmacs 
are the Skraelings of the Northmen, the first known 
explorers of our eastern coast, others relate the 
western tribes to the Asiatics. There are Greek 
words in Central American tongues, likenesses to 
Greek, Indian, Assyrian, and Egyptian architecture 
in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, pictur-es 
there of animals more common to Asia than to this 
29 



I 



Myths and Legends 

continent, round towers in the West like those of 
Ireland, and faiths and myths among the aborigines 
resembling those of the Old World. 

The proud Abenakis, of eastern Canada, say that 
they are the original people ; they acknowledge no 
ancestry ; they built villages, and believe that ** after 
making them and their land the Great Spirit made 
the rest carelessly." They were related in marriage 
to Pamola, the terrible One who lived in Ktaadn, ; 
and whose son killed game and men by pointing at ' 
them. On midsummer day, ** the day of sparkling 
fire," they built a large fire and danced about it — 
a Phoenician custom, the fire representing the sun. 
This custom the Acadians modify in their ** fire 
talk" on St. John's Eve, when the priest heaps fra- 
grant boughs before his church and recites prayers 
as the flames crackle among them. So soon as this 
is seen the country glitters and the news goes 
round ; for if a death has occurred the farmer 
dashes out his fire ; if sickness, he lets it flicker 
and die ; if all is well, it blazes jubilantly. 

A theory that the northern Indians descended 
from Tyrians and Israelites who came over in 332 
B.C. is based on the existence among those tribes 
of the deluge legend, that of the dove of discovery, 
and that of the ark of the covenant. The ark, 
which contains a shell that speaks oracles, under- 
stood only by the medicine-men, is never allowed 
to touch the earth, but is carried by the faithful into 
battle. When it is advanced among the enemy all 
30 



Beyond Our Borders 

rush to its safety, as the Scots pressed about the 
heart of Bruce when it was thrown among the foe, 
and as some tribes rallied about the heads of their 
chiefs when, after death, they were carried into the 
fight on poles, as standards. The exact where- 
abouts of this ark remains a mystery not to be re- 
vealed to the profane. 

But most wide-spread of all beliefs among the red 
men of the north is that in Nanabush, Manabozho, 
Glooskap, or Hiawatha, who is buried beneath 
Thunder Cape, or ** the sleeping giant," a basaltic 
uplift, thirteen hundred and fifty feet high, at the 
northwest corner of Lake Superior, and whose 
deeds of valor and charity are told in many tongues. 
Some say he was the statesman who federated the 
Six Nations and preached arbitration. He took 
on human form to benefit mankind, but often went 
away and dwelt with birds in a great space and 
great light. He came from the east in a granite 
boat, with a woman who was not his wife, for he 
never took one. When on a later voyage he gave 
room in his boat to a woman of evil character — as 
was proved by the storm that arose about him — he 
sprang ashore, leaving her to drift about until she 
became a shark. Hiawatha figures sometimes as 
creator, sometimes as Messiah, sometimes as a Noah 
who was saved from the deluge, and who sent forth 
the bird called the diver from his boat, to learn if 
the earth was emerging from the waters. On their 
subsidence he became the father of a new race, and 
31 



Myths and Legends 

walked over all America. In some legends he is 
the Hare, and the Hare was the sun. His foe, the 
snake prince, the god of evil, whom he destroyed, 
(has been thought to be a comet. Another foe, the 
giant frog, vast and cold, squatting over miles of 
plain, was the great glacier of the ice age. Be- 
lieving that his father had killed his mother, he 
chased him to the shores of the Arctic sea. His 
brother, the Flint, he killed in fight, and the boul- 
ders on the plains of Assiniboia, Alberta, and Sas- 
katchewan were the missiles they hurled at each 
other. In the mission-yard at Victoria, on the 
North Saskatchewan, was a meteorite that Mani- 
tou — possibly Manabozho — had cast down, and 
the Indians believed that to move it would be to 
incur his hate, and bring upon them battle, disease, 
and scarcity of game. White men moved it, and, 
unhappily for those who had been inveighing 
against the superstition of the Indians, war, small- 
pox, politics, and famine quickly followed. In the 
east he was called Glooskap. Minas Basin, Nova 
Scotia, was his beaver-pond, dammed at Cape 
Blomidon, his throne ; but when he saw that the 
pent waters were rising among the villages, to the 
alarm and distress of the people, he burst the rocks 
asunder, and swift tides now eddy through '* the 
Gut." Here he fought and killed the Great 
Beaver, whose bones are the Five Islands, near 
Parrsboro', though this legend appears also at Sault 
Sainte Marie. Spencer's Island is his upset kettle. 
32 



Beyond Our Borders 

On Partridge Island he held a great feast with Kit- 
pooseeagoono, and the pair of them ate a whale. 
Fragments of a great causeway of his building are 
seen in islands oiF the shore of the old maritime 
provinces. He was much in company with his 
uncle. Great Turtle, and shared many of his adven- 
tures. At one time, when he was not at hand, some 
hostiles caught the Turtle and condemned him to 
the stake. He rushed into the flames so eagerly that 
they pulled him out. Then they resolved to cut 
his throat, whereupon he seized a knife and hacked 
himself so fiercely that they disarmed him. Finally 
they agreed that he must be drowned, and this fate 
seemed to put him in terror, so that he caught at 
trees as they urged him on; but once at the water's 
edge the cunning fellow chuckled, dived out of 
sight, and so escaped. When the English came, 
Glooskap waded from Newfoundland to Nova Sco- 
tia, and either freed his hunting-dogs or turned 
them to stone, that their cries might not betray the 
lodges of his people to the strangers. But the red 
men became evil after they had known the English, 
and Glooskap, with Great Turtle, entered his 
white stone canoe and sailed away to the west, 
singing — some say up the St. Lawrence ; others 
say across the Great Lakes. All nature mourns 
his return, and the owl, the loon, and other birds 
and beasts found new voices on the night when 
he went away. 



33 



Myths and Legends 

GLOOSKAP AT MENAGWES 

THE spirit of the river St. John having become 
noisy and audacious, damaging the banks 
and brawling defiance to the gods, the Great Spirit 
showed his anger by closing its mouth. The re- 
mains of his dam are overhung by the suspension 
bridge in the present city of St. John, When the 
tide runs out there is a fall toward the sea, and 
when the tide runs in the fall tumbles across the 
reef up-river. This is the only reversible fall in the 
world, they say, and the lumber barges in the whirl 
of it, going up or down with the tide, are a sight 
worth seeing. Were the rock at the foot of the 
gorge to be blasted, so as to afford free ingress to 
the salt water, some miles of the land now culti- 
vated and dwelt upon, back of the city, would be 
permanently flooded. One Indian legend has it that 
a giant beaver built a dam across the outlet, creating 
a flood behind it in which all the inland people 
were drowned. Glooskap visited this point and 
named it Menagwes. It once befell him to take a 
long journey for the good of the human race, for 
he went about teaching men how to build canoes, 
to smoke pipes, to raise crops, to use paint, to make 
maple sugar, and, as he left his house unprotected, 
this chance for injury was not neglected by the 
wizards and demons that always lurk in good 
men's shadows. Disguised in thunder- clouds, they 
wrecked and burned his lodge, slew his friends and 
34 



Beyond Our Borders 

servants, and when he returned to find ashes and 
tokens of strife where had been comfort and peace, 
his tears fell so fast and free that they were like 
rain. A few of the wizards he tracked to the site 
of Pictou, where he slew them. A witch he caught 
in her lodge, on the site of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, 
and, after a fight that the stars stood still to see, 
he tore her into pieces. Then, calling to the 
whales, he mounted their backs and rode to New- 
foundland, and appeared, so towering that his head 
touched the sky, before other of his enemies, who 
shrank into the fog in terrified silence. In vain 
their cunning, for he searched out and destroyed 
them. Returning to Menagwes, he wept afresh, 
for his friends were ashes. He could not give 
life. 

THE DOGS OF CLOTE SCAURP 

EARLY fishers on the Restigouche who had 
Indian guides reported a disturbance at 
night by unearthly noises that hurried through the 
wood about them. The Indians would draw nearer 
to the fire, listen to the uncanny laughter and wail- 
ing cries, making sure that they were not the 
calls of owls and panthers, and remark, " Clote 
Scaurp's hunting-dogs are out." Clote Scaurp, 
who is only Glooskap under another spelling or 
pronunciation, lived near the Restigouche, on the 
narrow Waagan, for a time. In some myths of 
35 



Myths and Legends 

this locality he is human, in others a demi-god, in 
more distant ones he appears to be the Old Man 
of the plains families. But he was a good-natured 
hero, who hunted more for company than for the 
joy of killing, and his dogs, though often heard, 
have never been seen. He talked with birds, beasts, 
and fishes, and only when he found that any one of 
them had become savage and cruel would he grow 
angry. The moon, for instance, was a huge and 
dangerous beast that went up and down the land 
devouring and killing, so that all things fled before 
it. Clote Scaurp set off with his dogs to check its 
devilish conduct, and, meeting it in the wood, he 
struck it such a terrific whack with his club that it 
nearly gave up its life. Not only did it cease to 
grow from that moment, but it peaked and pined 
to the thing we see at this day, or night, and 
clambered into the sky to be out of reach of his 
weapons. To nearly all other things Clote Scaurp 
was kind, and earth and his dogs have been sorry 
without him. As evil tendencies began to show 
themselves, not only among beasts but also among 
men — envy, avarice, dishonesty, ruffianism, laziness 
— he gathered all creatures about him and preached 
good manners. He helped them to be better by 
living better himself; but the more he did for them 
the less they would do for themselves, and they 
were full of evil will. Unable longer to endure 
this state, he resolved to say farewell to the creatures 
he had known; so he called them from woods and 
36 



, Beyond Our Borders 

fields and waters ; but, though he spread a mighty- 
feast, only the brutes attended. The men were 
wholly ungrateful, and they hated lectures. At the 
end of the banquet Clote Scaurp and Great Turtle 
entered their canoe and rowed away toward the 
setting sun. All the brutes watched sorrowing, and 
listened to the mournful singing that came fainter 
and fainter out of the west. When, at last, the 
beasts broke silence to express their grief, each, to 
the general astonishment, spoke a different tongue 
from all the rest, and all fled as in fear, never again 
to meet in general council. The white owl calls 
all night, ** I am sorry ;" and Clote Scaurp's dogs 
still seek him, howling in the woods along the Res- 
tigouche. Two rocks at the foot of Blomidon are 
called his dogs, and he will awaken them when he 
returns, they say ; but those who have heard them 
know that they still enjoy their liberty. 

THE MISSIONS 

ALTHOUGH we concede the benefits given 
to new lands by commercial enterprise and 
their conquest by enlightened peoples, in the case 
of Canada it must be confessed that religious en- 
thusiasm accomplished more, both for the explorers 
and for the natives, than any other cause. The 
first men to force a way to the inland lakes, to map 
the plains, rivers, and mountains, to effect a peace 
with the savages, were the missionaries, and but for 
37 



Myths and Legends 

their eagerness for the conversion of the Indians 
the safety and material development of the country 
might have been long deferred. The Jesuits w^ere 
especially courageous. Their enthusiasm defied all 
threats and survived all torture. One missionary. 
Father Jogues, w^as shockingly maltreated, and his 
hand was chopped off, yet he regarded these things 
only as passing pains, and kept on with his work. 
Another, who had been hunted off to the woods, was 
found there frozen to death, in the attitude of prayer. 
A missionary on the upper Ottawa was roasted over 
a slow fire, hot axes were placed about his neck and 
head, and in mockery he was baptized with boiling 
water. Yet to his last breath he implored divine 
protection for his tormentors. After the capture 
of Fort Ignace, on Lake Simcoe, the missionaries 
Lalemant and De Brebeuf were cruelly used. 
The former was covered with bark, roasted, and 
partly eaten before his voice ceased in prayer. His 
companion enraged the savages by his indifference, 
for he seemed careless of suffering, though they 
kept him alive for three hours to endure it, and at 
the last they ate his heart, in order that his courage 
and fortitude might pass into their bodies. 

It was such heroism that subdued the savagery 
of the red men and turned them into poor, dull, 
ambitionless people, to the comfort of the pale- 
faces, who are now able to cheat them in trade 
without the risk of so much as a prod in the solar 
plexus. The contrast between the conduct of the 

i 



Beyond Our Borders 

French explorers and that of the soldiers and dealers 
who arrived later is a contrast between religious 
France of the seventeenth century and Brumma- 
gem of the nineteenth. Even the Hudson Bay 
and Northwest companies have not escaped cen- 
sure, for it has been alleged that when a gun paid 
for as many beaver-skins as would reach to the 
muzzle of it, the skins packed flat and the gun 
held upright, the barrel of the weapon grew and 
grew with each successive year until the Indian, 
after he had bought it with the peltry, had to bor- 
row a file and cut off a foot of useless metal. And 
it is a fact that when certain red men received pay 
in five-dollar bills they readily exchanged one of 
those pieces of paper for two silver dollars, for 
they could not read the number on the bill. 

Missionaries encouraged the building of shrines 
and churches, and people who had visions or 
heard voices were invited to commemorate the cir- 
cumstance. Our Lady of the Snows, for instance, 
appeared to a Breton cavalier who had lost his way 
while hunting on Trois Rivieres, and lighted him 
to a forge, where he found shelter. In return for 
this mercy he was induced by the priests to rear 
a shrine to her at Ville Marie, ** the city of the 
mount," and so it came about that the Church of 
Our Lady of the Snows was erected on ** the 
priests' farm" in Montreal. 

There is a faint and melancholy fear that the 
missionaries did a little cheating, from purely re- 
39 



Myths and Legends 

ligious motives. It has been set forth that the 
giant devil who infested Les Islets Machins, in the 
St. Lav^rence, was not an entirely disingenuous 
creation. The Jesuits are charged with telling the 
Indians that he used a pine-tree as a club, that he 
sprang upon people who were fishing in his neigh- 
borhood or innocently paddling up and down the 
river, and, discovering by an instinct that never 
erred, which of them had not been baptized, he 
brained them forthwith, sparing only the Chris- 
tians. This tale led to so many conversions that 
the giant fled in disgust, for lack of occupation. 
So, too, the report that Cap de la Madelaine, on 
the St. Lawrence, was haunted by a Magdalen 
who cried all night for Christian burial, may have 
had its deterrent effect on the thoughtless or im- 
moral among the women of the settlements. The 
braillard de la Madelaine has been otherwise as- 
cribed to the soul of a murderous wrecker, to a 
priest who allowed a babe to die without baptism, 
and to a little boy that alone survived a wreck, 
though only for a few hours. 

Was Christianity taught before the time of the 
Jesuits ? Did the Norsemen teach it ? When Car- 
tier landed at Gaspe Basin on the St. Lawrence, and 
planted a cross on shore with great solemnity, he saw 
with surprise that the natives made obeisance to this 
object, as one with which they were familiar, al- 
though this was in 1536, and Cartier was supposed to 
be the first white man in that region. The narrative 
40 



Beyond Our Borders 

of the Indians was to the eiFect that long before, 
when they had been troubled by a pestilence, their 
old men had a medicine dream, in which there ap- 
peared before them ** a man exceedingly beautiful, 
with a cross in his hand, who bade them return 
home, make crosses like his, and present them to 
the heads of families, assuring them that they would 
find therein a remedy for all their ills." This was 
done ; it worked a cure, and the cross became a 
talisman from that time forth. Was the ** beau- 
tiful man" a remembered description of Christ, or 
was it one of the '* white men clothed in wool," of 
northern tradition, who were undoubtedly Norse 
explorers ? Respecting these latter, the Milicites, 
or Meliseets, tell of a visit of tall, pale strangers 
who drove away the red men, built houses of stone, 
swigged mighty draughts from horns, shouting as 
they drank, and were overwhelmed by an earth- 
quake that changed the course of the St. John River. 
The Micmacs — by some alleged to be the lost Beo- 
thuks of Newfoundland — tell of a woman's dream, 
long before Cartier's landing, in which she saw an 
island floating toward the land with trees upon it, 
and creatures dressed in skins. Next day the island 
appeared in fact, but it was a ship ; the trees were 
masts, and the creatures were men who spoke in a 
strange tongue, making signs of friendship. One 
man, dressed in white, lived among them for a time, 
and tried to teach a new religion, but, although he 
found some listeners, the wise men refused to heed 
41 



Myths and Legends 

him, because the dream had been granted to a 
woman and not to a medicine-man. 

Unqualified praise can be given to the mission- 
aries of all sects and of no sect that have sought for 
the elevation of the red man, but they have some- 
times discovered that he was less of a savage than he 
looked. The conduct of Chief Joseph, of the Nez 
Perces, in the war so cruelly and unjustly waged 
against him, was admirable in its forbearance. In- 
stances of generosity and self-sacrifice are many. 
A Canadian clergyman, relating to a company of 
Blackfeet the measures common in civilized states 
for the care of orphaned children, explained that 
if his own children were left fatherless his prop- 
erty would be sold, or managed by an executor for 
their benefit, so that they might continue to secure 
board, clothing, and education. The Indians were 
both amused and astonished. *' The white people 
are savages," said one. ** When any people die in 
our camps and leave little children, we take them 
into our lodges. The best piece of buffalo meat 
we give to them. We clothe and train them. 
They are our bone and flesh. They have no 
father or mother, so we are all fathers and mothers. 
White people do not love their children. They 
have to be paid for loving orphans." The respect 
in which the aborigines hold their ancestors, at 
least when the latter are dead, is in contrast with 
the lack of honor that the dead sometimes have 
from the civilized. There is a cave at Mistassini 
42 



Beyond Our Borders 

that the Indians never approach closely, lest they 
should seem to spy on the ghosts of their fathers, 
who were buried there in other ages, and who still 
sit there, holding councils. 

And seldom do the Indians hear from the mis- 
sionaries an eloquence equal to their own. Listen 
to this prayer of a Piegan to a mountain manitou : 
** Hear, now, you Chief Mountain, you who stand 
foremost ; listen, I say, to the mourning of the 
people. Now the days are truly become evil, and 
are not as they used to be in ancient times. But 
you know : you have seen the days. Under your 
fallen garments the years lie buried. Then the 
days were full of joy. The buffalo covered the 
prairie, and the people were glad. Then they had 
warm dwellings, soft robes for covering, and the 
feasting was without end. Hear, now, you Moun- 
tain Chief. Listen, I say, to the mourning of the 
people. Their lodges and their clothing now are 
made of strange, thin stuiF, and the long days come 
and go without the feast, for our buffalo are gone. 
The drum now is useless, for who would sing and 
dance while hunger gnawed him ? Hear, now> 
you who stand among the clouds. Pity, I say, 
your starving people. Give us back those happy 
days. Once more cover the prairie with real food, so 
that your children may live again. Hear, I say, the 
prayer of your unhappy people. Bring back those 
ancient days. Then will our prayers again be strong. 
You will be happy, and the aged will die content." 
43 



Myths and Legends 

A FEW MONSTERS 

IN common with other parts of the continent, 
and the seas that wash their coasts, the Do- 
minion and its waters have been peopled with 
strange creatures, some of them the more terrible 
because they evade sight, touch, definition, and 
bullets. Now and again the sea-serpent rears his 
head, snorting, from the brine, and puts for shore 
at a pace that shames our torpedo-boats, and elderly 
maidens at the watering-places convincingly resign 
themselves to hysterics. He — perhaps there is 
also a she, though it does not seem possible — 
usually proves to be a porpoise, a sunfish, a white 
whale, or an octopus ; still, ** you can't generally 
'most always tell, sometimes," and one of the times 
might have been when he was not a porpoise, but 
the sea-serpent. The largest devil-fish known, 
taken on the Newfoundland coast, had a reach of 
forty feet, and there is no doubt about him, for he 
was pickled and carried to the States. Either of 
his arms would have made a more than respect- 
able snake. But all hope has not been abandoned 
of catching the veritable sea-serpent — the one with 
eyes like saucepans, with a grinning mouth set 
with stone-drill teeth, with a weedy mane, with 
stripes and spots more vivid than a mid-century 
fashion-plate, and with a braying voice like that of 
a mule or an agitator. Now and then he leaves his 
habitat and wallows overland to fresh water. He 
44 



Beyond Our Borders 

was seen, for instance, in Skiff Lake, New Bruns- 
wick, where he succeeded in stretching himself to 
a length of only thirty feet. 

Rattlesnake Islands, in Lake Erie, indicate by 
their name what desirable places they must have 
been to live away from, but the snakes that remain, 
if, indeed, there are any, are as nothing to what 
they were when the early explorers visited the 
group, carrying their imaginations with them ; for, 
said they, the islands bristled with a kind of snake 
that " blew from its mouth with great force a sub- 
tile wind," which whoso breathed must die. 

There were some rare birds in this country, too, 
beside the Indian thunder-birds that flashed ter- 
rible glances out of their eyes and made the heaven 
resound when they shook their iron wings. There 
was an eagle of portentous size that preyed on 
human beings when it lacked fawns and bear-cubs. 
They will show you, beside the deepest reach of 
the Ottawa, a cliff falling for hundreds of feet into 
the river, with no beach at its foot. It is Oiseau 
Rock, and to its top this eagle flew with a pappoose, 
the frantic mother climbing after it and bringing the 
child away in safety. This, by the bye, is a legend 
that is common the world over. 

It is a different sort of bird of which the Thlin- 
keets, of British Columbia, tell in their creation 
myth. This bird, Chethl, the Great Crow, is 
almost a deity. With his wings he beat back the 
rising waters. Then, when his uncle tried to kill 
45 



Myths and Legends 

him, he called on the floods and deluged the earth, 
flying up to heaven afterward, where he stuck his 
bill into a cloud and hung there till the water had 
gone down. At a later time he got hold of the 
three boxes in which were kept the sun, moon, 
and stars, wrenched the lids off^, and let the con- 
tents shine into the frightened eyes of men. 

In all Canada you shall not find a creature so 
fearful as the giant Gougou, who lived on the St. 
Lawrence, at Miscou. A ship's mast in our day 
would barely have reached to his waist, and, saving 
that he had two eyes, he was a very Polyphemus. 
He would wade into the river when men w^ere 
rowing or sailing past, pick them up by thumb and 
finger, put them into his sack, go ashore, and draw 
them out to eat at his leisure. The shrill whis- 
tling that he made sometimes put the canoe-men 
on their guard, and they would hurry in at some 
wooded cove until he had fed or gone to sleep be- 
fore they dared to resume their journey. 

The devil, from whose machinations men will 
ever pray to be delivered, is master of a hundred 
subtleties, and changes his form to cheat men's 
senses. We meet him in " Faust" as the black 
dog ; in " The Monk" as the terrific form with 
baleful eyes, bat's wings, and an air of malignant 
triumph ; we find him tempting some men and 
bullying others ; now he is the fiend, and anon the 
gentleman. But where else than in Canada will you 
find him working for the Church ? St. Augustin, 
46 



Beyond Our Borders 

in the province of Quebec, is the one place on earth 
that he has favored in this fashion, and we are still in 
the dark as to v^hy he did it. He took on the shape 
of a monster black horse, with the strength of ten 
usual horses in his thewrs, and hauled all the heavy 
stone for the foundations of the church that was 
built in that village in 1690. Was he looking for 
a chance to kick the priest ? Did he expect that a 
mason or two would mount his back, that he might 
rush into the St. Lawrence with them ? Did he in- 
tend to damage the foundations after he had helped 
to lay them, that the sacred edifice might tumble 
about the ears of his enemies ? Anyhow, he did 
the work, and did it well, and that is not the first 
time that his designs against mankind have failed. 

Belle Isle and Quirpon, in the icy strait between 
Newfoundland and Labrador, were peopled by so 
many devils that the French sailors would not go 
ashore unless they had crucifixes in their hands. 
There was a peculiar species of grifiin, also, that 
was destructive, and that doubters of a later age 
assert to have been wolves, for as late as 1873 
these animals were troublesome along the coasts 
of the strait, and several persons were killed by 
them. 

Possibly some of the sprites on Prince Edward's 
Island have four feet, because the mice are trouble- 
some there. There was a plague of these little 
animals in the seventeenth century, and one in 
Pictou in 181 5. They ate everything, stripping 
47 



Myths and Legends 

the fields bare ; then, for lack of other provision, 
they starved by thousands. 

Richmond Gulf, on the eastern side of Hudson 
Bay, was the abode of water spirits or some man- 
ner of evil creatures who vexed the waves so that 
they boiled and tumbled without a wind, and it 
was a sad thing for people in light canoes to get 
across those waters. At certain stages of the tide 
a great whirlpool was seen, and the creatures sat 
on the bottom, among the grinding stones, under 
the roaring vortex, waiting with upreached hands 
for the hapless canoeman who should be sucked be- 
low the sea, that they might feed on him. Before 
rowing through the narrow entrance the natives 
performed ceremonies to appease these evil ones, 
after which they dropped tobacco into the water, 
believing that the monsters would smoke it and be 
calmed and grateful long enough to enable the boat- 
men to reach shore in safety. ^ 

In some quarters the ignes fatui^ or will-o'-the- I 
wisps, are lanterns carried in the hands of spirits 
or demons. At Grand Falls, New Brunswick, 
where it is claimed that these lights have actually 
been seen, the Indians declare them to be the un- 
easy souls of dead folks who are hunting for their 
bodies, which they desire to occupy once more. 
If you would be without fear of the goblin of the 
Jack-o'-lantern, in French Canada, you must stop 
squarely in his path and ask him, " On what day 
of the month falls Christmas ?" 
48 



Beyond Our Borders 

The imp answers, in the Yankee fashion, by 
asking, " Well, what day is it?" 

And if the traveller gives the date, the imp will 
fly before him, but if he does not remember, it 
were better that he had held his peace, for he will 
presently be torn in pieces. 

SOME NAMES 

IN the names of places we often find as great a 
puzzle as in the names of people, yet if we 
could go to the bottom of the mystery we might 
discover an incident or a faith of some account ; in 
fact, much history has been written in names, while 
a public temper or humor is often disclosed in the 
same way. In eastern Canada all the saints in the 
calendar, and some who do not belong there, have 
fastened their names to the French villages, record- 
ing the occupancy and rule of the land by a re- 
ligious folk. If we go west and find places called 
Hell Roaring Creek, Last Chance, Hardscrabble, 
Silver King, Whoop-Up, and that sort of thing, it 
indicates a people whose motives are less religious 
than material, and who succeed in getting fun out 
of difficulties. The devil has fared in the West 
as well as the saints in the East, in which more 
peaceful district others have had in a few cases to 
take the brunt of his unpopularity, for Devil's Head, 
New Brunswick, was named for a settler named 
Duval. Hard luck for Duval ! Old France and 
4 49 



Myths and Legends 

Old England have often been drawn upon, while 
the strong, quaint, often musical speech of the ab- 
origines is perpetuated in too few lakes and rivers. 
Anglicism of names sometimes results oddly, as in the 
conversion of Chapeau Dieu to Shapody Mountain, 
and of Portage du Rat to Rat Portage. Though 
the two latter are the same, yet locally the French 
rat stands for muskrat, and the same word in Eng- 
lish does not. Montreal is the Royal Mountain ; 
Smoky Cape, or Cap Enfume, is so called because 
of the mists that toss about it ; Quebec is ** Quel 
bee !" (** What a cape !") that being the exclama- 
tion of its discoverers (unless it is true that there is 
an Indian word, Quebego, meaning narrow river), 
while at Ha-ha Bay the Frenchmen laughed with 
joy at sight of the green expanse after their voy- 
age up the Saguenay. We have forgotten what 
haunted Bleak House, where the commandant of 
Quebec once lived, but we know that Sault de 
Matelot, in the same city, is so called because a 
sailor, who had been relieving at a tavern " the en- 
forced horrors of a long sobriety," leaped off to 
escape a troop of yellow giraffes and pink monkeys 
with horses' tails. 

Lachine, or La Chine, means China, because the 
St. Lawrence was first thought to be a northwest 
passage to that land. This is the old name, but in 
other cases such changes have been made by later | 
comers that it is hard to recognize the originals. 
The Portuguese Baya Fondo is not so different from 
50 



Beyond Our Borders 

the Bay of Fundy, the Shubenacadie, haunted by- 
ghosts of fishermen caught in its tides, is heard 
under the common ** Shippenackety," we guess that 
Blow-me-down is Blomidon, but who would sup- 
pose that Acadie was the Micmac word Quoddy ? 
In fact, some believe that the name was borrowed 
from the other side of the sea, to denote the dis- 
covery of a New-World Arcadia. 

The turbulent Newfoundlanders, who, being 
mostly Celtic, are thorns in the sides of the Cana- 
dian and English governments, have not recorded 
in their names the fires, the riots, the shootings, 
the lurings to wreck, the extermination of the Boe- 
thuks, or other incidents that have made the history 
of their island exciting, and the traveller wonders 
what may have been the original meanings of Ex- 
ploits, Topsail, Killigrew's, Joe Batt's Arm, Seldom- 
come-by, Little-seldom-come-by, Fogo, Brigus, 
Hell Hill, Quiddy Viddy, Bally Haly, Maggoty 
Cove, Heart's Content, Bay of Despair, Dead 
Islands, and Rose Blanche. 

Because Cartier happened to reach it in a time 
of sultry weather, we have the Baie des Chaleurs. 
There is little doubt that Stanstead, province of 
Quebec, is named after one of the three Stansteads 
in England, yet it is alleged that the surveyors who 
laid off the township were a drunken lot, and were 
often heard calling to their chainmen, and even to 
their theodolites, to *' stan' stead' " (stand steady), 
when it was their own legs that were out of plumb. 
51 



Myths and Legends 

And, apropos of thirst, More-Rum Brook, in Yar- 
mouth County, Nova Scotia, has been a name of 
dread to prohibitionists, and is likely to be changed 
to Smith's ** Crick" as soon as they can acquire suf- 
ficient influence, as in its present form it is wicked. 
Sundry years ago, when a surveyor was going over 
this region, his chain-bearers and others constantly 
clamored for strong waters, finally refusing to budge 
until they had some grog. The surveyor had sent 
to a distance for the rum, and told his repr&hensible 
associates to drink from the brook until they got it. 
That is how it came to be More-Rum Brook. 

In upper Lake Huron lies the chain of Manitou- 
lins, large islands now occupied by graziers and 
farmers, but formerly a favorite visiting-place of 
the Indians. They never abode there long, for 
they looked on the islands as dwelling-places of the 
spirits of the earth, water, and air, spirits that 
required reverence and propitiation, and they dared 
not attempt familiarity, Manitoulin means spirit- 
land, or land of the gods. Manitoba, likewise, 
preserves the name of the Manitou, or Great Spirit. 
That name applied originally to Lake Manitoba, 
whose waters the Indians believed to be stirred by 
the spirit. 

Moose Jaw is only a contraction of *' Place- 
where-the-white-man-mended-his-cart- wheel -with- 
the-jawbone-of-a-moose," which was thought to be 
too numerous a name for busy people. Calling 
River commemorates an echo, and Pipestone River 
52 



Beyond Our Borders 

refers to the material from which the red men make 
their ceremonial pipes. Pie Island and the Sleep- 
ing Giant, known to voyagers on Lake Superior, 
have reference only to the outlines of those heights, 
but the Petits Ecrits was so called because of the 
picture-writings found on the face of the rock, 
representing men, animals, and canoes cut in the 
lichen. West of the Wild-Cat Hills Ghost River 
flows past the column-like mountain of Devil's 
Head. Old maps call the river Dead Man's Creek. 
The Assiniboins are responsible for both names, 
since they declare it to be haunted by the ghost of 
an old chief who rides up and down its banks on a 
horse. Devil's Lake, near Banff, was a resort of 
malignant spirits, and Cascade River, its outlet, 
was the scene of a murder in which the victim's 
head was struck from his shoulders. A cave on 
the Bow near Canmore is haunted by a spirit, and 
is held in much regard by the natives. Near Banff 
is Stony Squaw Mountain, thus called from the 
tradition that when an old man of the Stony tribe 
lay ill and helpless in his lodge at the foot of this 
height, his old wife took his weapons and did a 
man's work as hunter, killing enough big-horns to 
feed them both until he recovered. Dr. James 
Hector, exploring the Canadian Rockies in 1857, 
was kicked by his horse in the shadow of Mount 
Stephen. Hence we have Kicking Horse Pass. 
The name Wapta, applied to the stream that flows 
through it, means only river. Wait-a-Bit Creek 
53 



Myths and Legends 

was so called by the first explorers, who were con- 
stantly fetched up with a short turn by a brier that 
grows thickly along its shores. When caught by 
the thorns, the victims called to their companions 
to *^ Wait a bit.'' The Arctic-looking Hermit 
Mountain on the north side of Rogers' Pass takes 
its name from a shape of stone far up under the 
sky. It looks like a cowled hermit talking to a dog. 
Close by is Cheops, recalling the Egyptian pyramid 
by its form as well as its name. Mount Grizzly 
explains itself, and Asulkan means wild goat. 

Sibilants multiply as we near the Pacific, for the 
Siwash — probably a corruption of Sauvage — inter- 
sperse many j's in their weak, choking, clicking 
language, as we find in Spuzzum, Spatsum, Scuzzy, 
Snohomish, Squallyamish, Shuswap, Sicamous, Spal- 
lumsheen, Sumas, Skagit, Similkameen, Osyoos, 
Spokane, Semiamoo, Swinonish, Stillaguamish, 
Nooksak, and Snoqualmie. These uncouth names 
often have agreeable meanings, however. Lee's 
Post, on Pincher Creek, sufi^ered so from the cold 
that its name came to be Freeze Out. Slide-Out, 
on Belly River, was convenient to hiding-places to 
which traders in unlawful whiskey ** slid out" when 
the mounted police approached, and at Stand-Off 
the traders kept a band of marauding Indians at 
bay. Polly Cow's Island, in Katchewanook Lake, 
is named for an Indian girl who is buried there. 
Handsome Jack, an Otonabee River Indian, had 
courted her, but, believing that she was not strong 
54 



Beyond Our Borders 

enough to do his housework, he married a more 
buxom damsel, and Polly pined into her grave. 

Juan de Fuca, the old Greek pilot, found the 
strait that bears his name in 1592, but for a century 
or more thereafter this region was half mythical. 
Bacon thought it a safe place for his Atlantis, and 
Swift for his land of giants, Brobdingnag. The 
old Indian, Spanish, and Russian names were com- 
placently wiped off from the map by Mr. Van- 
couver, who fixed his own name on a great island, 
while Puget Sound and Mount Baker celebrate a 
couple of his shipmates. Mount Tacoma was 
called Mount Rainier to flatter an Englishman 
who never saw it. Captain Gray, of Boston, was 
leaving Puget Sound as Vancouver entered it in the 
Discovery, but any names that the Americans ap- 
pended to the islands, capes, and mountains were 
not allowed to stay. 

TROUBLES ON THE ST. LAWRENCE 

THE St. Lawrence is a river of many myste- 
ries and troubles. Blood has often mingled 
with its waters, the blood of French and English, 
Christian and savage, soldier and martyr. From 
the lakes to the gulf its surface has been vexed by 
the keels of fighting fleets, and its shores have 
echoed to the roar of cannon. So late as 1838 it 
was a scene of hostilities, for in that year the Brit- 
ish ship Sir Robert Peel was burned among the 
55 



Myths and Legends 

Thousand Islands by a harum-scarum band of men 
who wanted to establish a republic in Canada. 
'* Bill'* Johnson, leader of this company, kept out 
of sight for some time after, his daughter Kate row- 
ing him from one island to another, and keeping 
him in food during the search that the Canadians 
made for him. Part of the time he was at the 
Devil's Oven. It is told of Johnson that he was 
trapped on Wells Island by Captain Boyd, of the 
English army. ** I'm fairly caught," he confessed, 
'* and you've had a long row after me, so you must 
be thirsty. Take a drink and rest yourself." The 
officer dropped upon a bench and took a good tug 
at the outlaw's flask, while Johnson lighted his 
pipe and, holding the coal in a tongs over a barrel, 
remarked, in a matter-of-fact way, " Shall I go with 
you, or will you stay and go to hell with me ? This 
barrel is full of powder." The captain excused 
himself, and scrambled for his boats along with his 
men, for Johnson had put the coal on the barrel- 
head, and it was eating into the wood. In a minute 
there was a big explosion, and a great smoke rolled 
from the cave-mouth. Captain Boyd hoped that it 
meant the last of Johnson ; but that reprobate was 
out of sight in a new hiding-place before the oars 
of the red-coats were fairly in the water. 

These islands have been famed in Cooper's 

*' Pathfinder" and in the verse of Thomas Moore, 

who also celebrates the village of Sainte Anne in 

his " Boat Song." Near Prescott is the windmill, 

56 



Beyond Our Borders 

now a light-house, where a company of ** patriots," 
under lead of a Polish exile, held out against Can- 
ada for several days, in the belief that the prov- 
ince needed to be ** liberated" from something or 
somebody, while many Americans sat watching 
on their own side of the river, occasionally saying 
** Hooray !" There are tales of perilous descents 
by fugitives and Indians of the rapids that tourists 
view languidly from steamer-decks. Even now 
the habitant on its banks shudders when an owl 
cries, for he remembers the stories told by his 
grandmother, in the firelight, of feux follets and 
loups garousy which are demons that watch for the 
souls of the unrepentant and the unbaptized. On 
the pass of the Long Sault, on the river's left bank, 
occurred one of the stoutest fights in history. 
Learning that a large war-party of Iroquois had 
set off to destroy the infant colonies of Montreal 
and Quebec, the Sieur des Ormaux, better known 
by his baptismal name of Dollard, hurried away to 
stop the advance, and at least gain time for prepa- 
ration. He had only sixteen white men and two 
faithful Hurons, and his shelter was of the hastiest 
and slightest ; yet for three days of hunger, thirst, 
and sleeplessness this Spartan band withstood the 
assault of at least five hundred savages, greedy for 
their blood, and, although every man in the defences 
died, the Indians were so convinced of the futility 
of war against so brave a people that they went 
back to their homes. In the stillness of the night 
57 



Myths and Legends 

is it the rumor of the rapids, making the Long 
Sault, that is heard, or is it the sound of battle that 
nature would forget but cannot while evil spirits 
dwell on earth ? 

Nor have all the wicked spirits run away from 
the travellers with red guide-books, nor hidden 
among the trees when they saw the train or steamer 
coming, nor covered their ears or glared in envy 
when they heard some frenzied stranger making 
remarks into a dilatory telephone. Old residents 
near the Cape of Crows will tell you that the black- 
birds that flap and squall among the mists are devils 
and bring bad luck to sailors, while there are big- 
ger devils in the clouds that swirl around the cape, 
and devils in the earth likewise, for this region is 
occasionally shaken by earthquake. In 1663 an 
earthquake along the north shore was attributed by 
the Indians near Montreal to the return of the 
spirits of their ancestors from the happy hunting- 
grounds. The poor souls wanted a change of diet. 
As there was not game enough for both the living 
and the dead, the Indians fired their muskets to 
scare their parents back again. And, sure enough, 
the dead and good Indians ceased from troubling 
after a few months, and went back to the Sand Hills. 
That was a year of great distress to the people 
along the river. Every time the earth shook some 
of them remembered that they had not said their 
prayers, and others hurried to confess that they 
had sold fire-water to the Indians. The frightened 
58 



Beyond Our Borders 

ones were either driven to drink or turned from all 
but enough of it. There were many land-slides, 
and the river ran white as far as Tadousac. ** Me- 
teors, fiery-winged serpents, and ghastly spectres 
were seen in the air ; roarings and mysterious 
voices sounded on every side." The Pointe aux 
Trembles and Les Eboulements preserve in their 
names the record of these quakes, while, for strange 
reasons, the Isle of Orleans has been full of gob- 
lins ever since. 

The Montagnais tell of a giant, Outikon, who, 
being evil, fled before the cross of the missionaries 
from Les Islets Machins, where another cannibal 
monster succeeded him, and found a home at Lake 
Mistassini, where the Nashkapiouts live, who never 
pray and never wash ; and to show his rage at 
Christians he stamps his feet every now and again, 
shaking the hills to their foundations. It used to 
be said that there was a volcano on the Height of 
Land, south of Hudson Bay, and that the earth- 
quakes followed its eruption. 

The various saints who are invoked on such oc- 
casions do not keep the imps from congregating 
about the Pointe de Tous les Diables in its glooms 
and storms. Behind this cape is Cartier's land of 
gold and rubies, peopled by white men clothed in 
wool. (Legendary vikings?) Farther north is a 
race that frightened back the first explorers, a peo- 
ple who had only one leg apiece and not a stomach 
among them all. They lived on scenery. Better 
59 



Myths and Legends 

such than some of the more usual red men of a 
later date. There were the Hurons and Senecas, 
for example, who, after living in peace together at 
Hochelaga for years, suddenly fell to cutting one an- 
other's weasands and barbering one another's hair. 
This was a little before Champlain's arrival, and the 
traditionary reason for it is that a Seneca chief had 
refused to allow his son to marry a Huron girl. In 
high wrath at this slight, the young woman prom- 
ised herself to any one who should kill the old man, 
and on these terms she was won by a young brave 
of her own tribe ; but in the war that followed the 
Hurons were nearly exterminated. 

And what shadowy craft beat about the turbulent 
river, with its sea width of mouth, in night and 
storm, or flit among the fantastic pictures of the 
mirage ! There is the Flying Dutchman, who has 
been known to put in among the bays in the access 
of a fearful thirst, and sail away again, gnashing 
his stomach with his fists and talking improper lan- 
guage. And there is Roberval, who ascended the 
Saguenay and never came down in the flesh. He, 
too, skims over the river, against the wind, and with 
no wind. And Henry Hudson, abandoned by mu- 
tineers, with his son and six faithful sailors, in his 
open boat, amid the icy waters that bear his name 
in mocking compensation for his suffering, — does 
he not work his way up the St. Lawrence when, 
on every twentieth year, he sets off to hold revel 
in his beloved Catskills ? In autumn the giant rock 
60 



^ Beyond Our Borders 

of Perce, through whose now fallen arches sloops 
used to sail, looks down on a phantom ship that 
has been cruising up and down the bay since 171 1. 
It is one of the ships of Admiral Hovenden Walker 
ihat was hurled in a gale against Cap d'Espoir, — 
ignorantly yet fitly Englished into Cape Despair. 
Walker had captured an old sea-dog, one Jean Pa- 
radis, and had ordered him to guide his ships to 
Quebec, that he might surprise the French in that 
stronghold. Paradis stoutly refused, and in the at- 
tempt to ascend the river not only the phantom 
bark but eight transports were smashed on the Isle 
of Eggs, and a thousand red-coats slept on the bot- 
tom that night. This ghostly ship had the cap- 
tain's wife on board, and as it strikes the rock an 
officer and a woman in white are seen at the bow, 
clasped in each other's arms, while the air is filled 
with wailing as the form of the vessel cracks and 
fills. The rock itself, three hundred and fifty feet 
high, has its own *^ haunt," — a water wraith who 
climbs to the top and cries among the flocks of sea- 
birds. 

Something is remembered of old Gamache, the 
wrecker, who has not troubled mariners much, it 
is true, since they found him dead in his cabin on 
the Isle of Wrecks, but who had been seen enter- 
taining the devil oiF Anticosti, and who when 
chased by government cutters appeared to envelop 
I his boat and himself in blue flame and dance off 
across the river, regardless of call or shot. 
61 



Myths and Legends 

More dreaded than these spirits is the woman of 
the o'er-kind eyes. She, too, affects the region of 
the Perce Rock, and appears in the twilight putting 
off from shore in a light boat, rowed with a sin- 
gularly noiseless stroke by a man whose face is 
never clearly seen. She asks a passing captain to 
give her fare as far as Quebec, and, as these river- 
men are seldom so pressed that they cannot slack up 
for a passenger, the skipper backs his mainsail and 
takes the woman aboard, while the ferryman who 
has brought her rows away into the mist. She is 
queerly dressed, and wears a blood-red scarf, — one 
that is yet no redder than her lips. And immedi- 
ately the woman begins to make eyes at the captain. 
Her interest seldom fails of a return, for a tender- 
ness toward the sex is a fatal weakness in sailors, 
and soon the two are deep in talk in the shadow of 
the sail. Whether it is that the captain does not 
see the green light in her eyes, the cat-like gleam 
that sends a shiver through the crew, or whether 
the vessel goes wide of her course because all eyes 
are on the woman, it certainly happens that before 
eight bells have gone for midnight on passing ves- 
sels the ship is pounding to pieces on a reef and 
with a shrill laugh the woman has disappeared. 



62 



Beyond Our Borders 

AMERICAN ELEPHANTS 

THIRTY years ago buiFalo fed up and down 
oar plains for thousands of miles, the herds 
sometimes a league across and seven in length. Now 
these great animals are practically extinct, — slaugh- 
tered for the amusement of *' sporting" men, who 
left them to rot on the earth and the Indians to 
hunger for lack of buffalo meat. Not in like way, 
nor from mere love of blood, yet even more com- 
pletely have our elephants been killed. Elephants ? 
Ay, truly. Some of the largest, strongest, most 
savage of the tribe had their home in this Western 
world during the age of men. Their skeletons 
have been found in our marshes, and the separate 
teeth and bones were a cause of dispute and 
wonderment among the wise men of recent centu- 
ries. Cotton Mather, discoverer of mares'-nests and 
witches, mentions a thigh-bone seventeen feet long ! 
and Governor Dudley told him that it pertained to 
a giant *^ for whom the flood only could prepare a 
funeral ; and without doubt he waded as long as he 
could keep his head above the clouds, but must at 
length be confounded, with all other creatures." 
Afterward it was decided that the bones must have 
belonged to a colossal lion that ate two or three 
horses at a meal and roared so when he was hungry 
that the earth shook. Not until Cuvier's time was 
it agreed that the monster was a species of elephant, 
that it was extinct, and that it would have eaten 

63 



Myths and Legends 

neither man nor horses when alive. Old beliefs 
die hard, all the same, and it is hardly more than 
fifty years since a Southern '* scientist" fixed up the 
bones of a mastodon in the likeness of a human being, 
raised it on its hind legs, covered its head with raw 
hide, and proclaimed it a giant. Another mastodon 
was grotesquely put together and advertised as the 
Biblical leviathan, which was supposed to anchor 
itself to trees by its curved tusks and sleep on the 
face of the waters. On the Pacific slope the bones 
of mastodons are found in the gravels, mingled with 
human bones and stone arrow-heads, showing that 
men and mastodons lived together, for the elephan- 
tine species survived here later than in Europe. In 
Mexico not only are the bones found, but there are 
sculptures in which the elephant is represented, and 
our own Indians portray it in the forms of pipes 
and in drawings scratched on stone. In Louisiana 
the red men said that crows had gone to feed on the 
flesh of an immense animal that had died near the 
stream they called, because of this incident. Carrion 
Crow Creek. A mastodon's thigh was exhibited 
to Cortes as that of a giant, one of a race of evil 
men whom the Aztecs had succeeded in destroying, 
after long years of war. In South America similar 
traditions existed. On the Parana it was said that 
the creature burrowed in the bluffs, but in the pam- 
pas of the Argentine states it was a Titan again, and 
« Field of Giants" and " Hill of the Giants" are 
names that occur there. 

64 



i 



Beyond Our Borders 

The Delawares had a legend of a wholesale de- 
struction of bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other ani- 
mals by the mastodons, which they called " big 
buffalo ;" but before the mischief had gone far the 
Great Spirit grasped his lightning, stepped out of 
heaven, the prints of his feet being left on a rock at 
Big Bone Lick, and killed the monsters right and 
left. One old bull was tougher than the lightning. 
As the bolts fell on his forehead he shook them off, 
and for some time he stood, daring the Great Spirit. 
At length a stroke fell on his side, and smarting and 
trumpeting he galloped off toward the northwest, 
clearing all the rivers and the great lakes in power- 
ful leaps, and there in Alberta, or British Columbia, 
he still lives, with a few subdued associates. Be- 
side these creatures, the natives say, all other animals 
are as insects ; their skin is proof against arrows, and 
they have *' an arm" that they use as we do ours, — 
of course, a trunk. Still farther north, in the re- 
gion of the great, lonely lakes, we hear that the 
fathers of the Indian tribes had to build their houses 
on piles in the water, like the ancient dwellings of 
the Swiss, in order to escape assault from the ele- 
phants, who ravaged the whole country. 



65 



Myths and Legends 

HIDDEN GOLD 

WAS ever a place or a time where and when 
the people did not believe in hidden 
wealth? There is a peculiar charm in the rare, 
the hinted, and the unseen that leads some classes 
to conceal even their wisdom, while others reveal it 
only to the initiated. In common with the United 
States, the British provinces were hiding-places for 
the gold of pirates, of misers, of adventurers, and 
of fugitives, and ever and anon it enters some head, 
that might be better occupied, to search for this 
treasure. Money is spent in the seeking, but little 
is taken in return. Hard-minded men say the rea- 
son is that there is none to be taken. Certain who 
are more open to conviction declare the reason 
to be a pernicious activity of ghosts and goblins in 
guarding the hoard, for it was a practice with pi- 
rates to kill one of their comrades and bury him atop 
of the chest or keg of doubloons, that his spirit 
might haunt the spot and scare away intruders. 
Any self-respecting pirate of this nineteenth century 
would be so disgusted by this treachery of his ship- 
mates that when he came up out of the sand and 
found himself dead he would bid all his comrades 
go hang — as they would be sure to do anyway — and 
would trudge away to a warmer clime and more 
congenial occupations. Captain Kidd, who really 
did bury one box of valuables on Gardiner's Island, 
New York, where it was found, was consequently 
66 



Beyond Our Borders 

suspected of having salted the whole Atlantic coast 
with crowns and cob dollars, but if so he died 
keeping his secret. A rumor that a part of this 
wealth was deposited on the shore near Halifax 
has created some anxious guesses as to where. 

Probably the most touching spectacle of confi- 
dence exhibited to the gaze of nations was that of- 
fered by the people who dug over Oak Island, near 
Chester, Nova Scotia, in search of this treasure of 
Kidd's, for they went down into the earth a hun- 
dred feet. As if busy pirates had time to dig graves 
of half that depth for their earnings ! But they 
found masonry and timber, and do not guess their 
meaning. 

A few miles away, near the Dutch town of Lu- 
nenburg, are the Ovens, — sea- worn caves in a cliiFof 
gold-bearing rock, — that were much likelier hiding- 
places for treasure, because a great fear of the Ovens 
has existed since the time when an Indian, being 
swept into the biggest of them, was carried to the 
interior of the earth and presently cast up among 
the Tuskets, with his geography mixed and his 
shins bruised. Dark Cove and Money Cove, on 
Grand Manan, are reputed burial-places for a part 
of the Kidd gains. 

Dead Man's Cove, sometime known as such to 
the people about Grand Pre, was one of Kidd's 
banks, and in after-years an effort was made to res- 
urrect the treasure, a fortune-teller having given 
minute directions where to find it. It was a calm, 
67 



Myths and Legends 

clear night of moonshine when the seekers, after 
long work, struck their spades against a crock, and, 
opening the lid, felt their hearts dance within them, 
for it was full to the brim with Spanish dollars. As 
they plunged deeper to free the pot from the close- 
packed clay, one of them found that the iron had 
pierced a skull,— the skull of the murdered watcher. 
Almost on the instant there fell a bolt of lightning, 
accompanied by an appalling roar of thunder. A 
blast of wind blew out the lanterns and tipped one 
man over, so that work ceased then and there. It 
is said that if one of the seekers is killed on the 
spot the spell will be lifted. Some gold is alleged 
to have been taken from a farm on Campobello 
by adventurers who promised to share it with the 
owner of the property if they found it. Perhaps 
they didn't find it. Anyway, they never happened 
around to share it. 

Then there was the Frenchman Clairieux, who 
buried several boxes of money on Grand Island, in 
Niagara River, where a handful of ancient pieces 
was found two centuries later, and Fontenoy, 
another Frenchman, who buried his money — he 
had made it by cheating the Indians — in a brass ket- 
tle at Presque Isle, near Detroit. At the ancient 
forges on the St. Maurice River — which are the 
oldest smelters of iron in America, unless that dis- 
tinction can be proved for the smelter at Prin» 
cipio, Maryland — the French authority was repre- 
sented by a governor who lived in a stately chateau i 
68 



Beyond Our Borders 

near by. When the English took Canada they 
heard rumors of the manufacture of shot and can- 
non in these forges, and forthwith a detachment 
of red-coats appeared before the place, demanding 
the surrender of everything and everybody. The 
governor v^as absent at the time, but Demoiselle 
Poulin, a young relative, v^ho spoke for him, threw 
the keys into the river rather than give them up. 
The English then entered the chateau and the 
forge by force ; but it is said that the delay caused 
by Demoiselle Poulin's obduracy was long enough 
to enable the servants and workmen to bury many 
of the valuables about the premises. So, when 
dim lights and shadowy shapes are seen about the 
ruins, the traveller knows that the old governor and 
his domestics are trying to discover where they hid 
their gold. 

It is sad that the great block of lapis lazuli 
should have disappeared, for it was *^ worth ten 
crowns an ounce." It lay two or three miles off 
the island of Grand Manan, and was a guide to 
mariners aiming to enter St. John River. An offi- 
cer, who broke off the piece that was valued as 
above, and the veracious Charlevoix, are authority 
for this rock. It is worth dredging to the surface, 
maybe. 

And as Mount Washington had its carbuncle 

that lighted the clouds with a ruddy glow at night, 

so the great cliff of six hundred feet that guards the 

entrance to the Basin of Minas has its enormous 

69 



Myths and Legends 

Diamond of Blomidon. It is seen flashing from 
afar, but every attempt of seekers to wrest the gem 
from the mocking spirits of the crag has been a 
failure. Copper you find there, and agate, ame- 
thysts, garnets, and beautiful zeolites, but the dia- 
mond dims as you approach it, and close at hand 
fades utterly from view. 

Wreck, more often than Piracy, threw wealth 
on the shores of Sable Island, ** land of sand and 
ruin and gold," *' the charnel-house of North 
America." Gales uncover the skeletons of cast- 
aways, but the winds and waves have buried only 
the more deeply the crocks of doubloons and pieces 
of eight that perhaps the high-seas-men did not put 
here. Sarcastic, indeed, is the name of ** French 
Gardens," as applied to this spot of blight, where 
the forty convicts sent as slaves to the new colony 
were set ashore by De la Roche, to await a call 
that never came, except from death. Only a dozen 
escaped this call, and five years later they were 
taken off, a shaggy lot, half turned to beasts in ap- 
pearance, if not in nature. It is guessed that the 
only available riches of the island are in its berries 
and wild pigs. 

On Fisguard Street, Victoria, British Columbia, 
stands a dilapidated house of two stories and a 
ghost story. Who or what the ghost is the people 
are forgetting ; but they recall the Australian who 
bought it twenty-five years ago when he arrived 
from the gold-fields of the antipodes, and it is 
70 



Beyond Our Borders 

alleged that some of them prowl about the yard 
when the weather keeps the police in-doors ; for, 
in spite of its ghost, its spiders, and its rats, the 
place has a rare interest for them. There is Aus- 
tralian gold in the yard, — a pot of it. The Aus- 
tralian had an ignorant horror of banks, bonds, 
stock, mortgages, and the usual interest-paying in- 
vestments, so he committed his wealth to the earth, 
taking it up and increasing it from time to time. 
When he died he enjoined his wife never to reveal 
its hiding-place. She refused to sell or lease the 
property. Hence the visits of folks with shovels 
and divining-rods. 

When gold-hunters went to the rich fields of the 
Klondike they heard reports from the Indians of a 
** Too-Much-Gold Creek," whose sands were yel- 
lower than those of Pactolus ; but the natives them- 
selves had forgotten, and the others, though they 
moved the name to another stream, never found 
just where the water flowed. It has taken its place 
on the maps of other days, — the maps on which 
one finds the islands most affected by mermaids 
and the seas vexed by serpents and krakens. 



71 



Myths and Legends 

HOW ONE BEAR LOST HIS LIFE 

IN the folk-lore of certain tribes Brother Bear 
is a gentle and sagacious creature, who fre- 
quents the settlements with the same freedom as if 
he were a dog. He slides on the ice with the chil- 
dren, carries them on his back, and is glad of scraps 
after dinner, though he prefers fruit, vegetables, 
and honey to meat, when he can get these dain- 
ties. The Indians encouraged his friendship be- 
cause he kept their camp free from refuse, and also 
drove off the wolves that so greatly vexed the 
maritime provinces. Indeed, there is a claim that 
bears have never been killed for food in the East, 
even when food of all kinds was made scarce by 
raiding armies of French and English. This may 
have been true among the Passamaquoddies, whose 
totem was the bear, and who refuse to sit at a table 
where bear's meat is served, although even they 
may be egged on to self-defence, as Nick Lewi 
was when he was overhauled by a bear who had 
stepped into four separate wild-cat traps and had 
one on each paw, which enabled him to box tre- 
mendously, and who succumbed only after repeated 
stabbings. 

It does not often happen to a hunter to get off 
so easily in an encounter with a wild animal as a 
Melicite Indian did in the New Brunswick woods 
when he met a bear. He was a calm person, as one 
must be who lives by the hunt, and these Indians 
72 



Beyond Our Borders 

have a splendid nerve. The white man thinks he 
does pretty well when he brings down his prey at 
a hundred yards, and he wants a magazine rifle and 
dynamite bullets at that. Until recently the savage 
did his killing at such short range, with knives and 
spears and arrows, that if he missed his aim he 
might die for it. But this adventure occurred in 
later times, and is best told in the Indian's own 
words : ** One time I go huntum moose. Night 
come dark, rain and snow come fast. No axe for 
makum wigwam. Gun wet, no getum fire. Me 
very tired. Me crawl into large hollow tree. Find 
plenty room. Almost begin sleep. Bimeby me 
feelum hot wind blow on my face. Me know hot 
bear's breath. He crawl into log, too. I takum 
gun. She no go. I think me all same gone, — all 
eat up. Then me thinkum my old snuiF-box. I 
take some snuiF and throwum in bear's face and he 
run out. Not very much likeum, I guess. Me lay 
still all night. He no come again. Every leetle 
while, every time, bear he go * o-o-O-ME !' sneezum 
over and over, great many times. Morning come, 
me fixum gun and shootum, dead. He no more 
sneezum, no more this time.'* 



73 



Myths and Legends 

THE ISLE OF DEMONS 

STRENGTH and courage were often exhibited 
by the women who were among the early im- 
migrants to this country, — delicate creatures reared 
at the court of France, some of them, and knowing 
little but luxury and ease until they came to these 
shores. A typical ** new woman" of that kind was 
Marguerite de Roberval, niece of the harsh old 
Sieur de Roberval, ** the little king of Vimeu," who 
came here to possess the land and flog the natives 
of it into the religion of love and charity. The 
girl had plighted her troth to a young cavalier who 
had enlisted among the adventurers on this expedi- 
tion. It was of course impossible that their love- 
making should escape notice, and old Roberval was 
so incensed about it that when his ship arrived at 
the Isle of Demons (Quirpon, near Newfoundland) 
he set Marguerite ashore there with her nurse, and 
only four guns with their ammunition to support 
life, while he held on his way ; but the lover sprang 
from the deck with gun in hand and armor on his 
back and swam to shore, where the three exiles 
ruefully or vengefully watched the departing ship. 
By their united eiForts a hut was built, and here a 
babe was born to Marguerite. For a little time 
their state was not so ill. Then came the cold, the 
game grew scarce, privation and anxiety told upon 
them. The cavalier was first to go ; next the in- 
fant ; lastly, the nurse. Marguerite buried them. 
74 



Beyond Our Borders 

She was alone. Some women would have resigned 
themselves to despair, and truly this woman had little 
to live for. Not only was she without human com- 
pany, but imps and spirits walked over the island, 
peered out of the mist, whispered in the night, 
called and whistled in the gale. These evil ones 
had horned heads and wings and '* howled like a 
crowd in the market-place." At last a sail appeared. 
She heaped her little fire with brush and made a 
smoke, which struck terror to the crew, for this 
was the Isle of Demons, and the smoke was of the 
eternal burning. And so they sailed away. Hoping, 
despite her grief and misery. Marguerite fished 
and hunted, skinning the animals that she shot, for 
clothes, and keeping her hut stanch against the 
gales, praying when the fiends shook the door and 
muttered strange words at the window. In the 
third winter another sail appeared, and again she 
heaped up brush and sent a column of smoke aloft. 
This time the crew were scared, especially when 
they saw the woman's figure gesticulating franti- 
cally on a rock, but the ofiicers forced them to 
anchor and make a landing. They were honest 
fishermen, and never imagined at the first that this 
brown and lonely creature had been an ornament 
of the gayest society in Europe, but they took her 
back to France with them, strong, sedate, resource- 
ful now, and she regained her kin. If she felt 
any bitterness toward her uncle she was able to 
take a satisfaction in hearing shortly of his failure.. 
75 



Myths and Legends 

He went swelling to the New World as ** Lord 
of Norembega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General 
in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, 
Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and 
Baccalaos," with five shiploads of convicts in his 
train, this precious company having been assembled 
to develop the country and convert the red men. 
Roberval was a hard master ; perhaps he needed to 
be, and he so ill-treated his rag-tag following, giving 
them scanty food and plenty of hard work at forts, 
mills, and shops, shooting, hanging, and beating 
women as well as men for the least offences, that they 
mutinied, and his life often hung in the balance. 
Presently the food gave out, and the proud Sieur was 
fain to eat fish and roots boiled in oil, — he who had 
dined with kings. Scurvy set in, and the wretches 
died pitifully, yet unpitied. Roberval was recalled, 
and according to one report he was struck down at 
night by an unknown hand before the Church of the 
Innocents, in Paris ; but others believe that he re- 
covered and made a second venture for wealth and 
power, his cruel, haughty spirit again defeating its 
own aim, so that he died, leaving none to mourn him. 
As he went to his death among the black and lonely 
reaches of the Saguenay, did he shrink aghast at the 
memory of his misdeeds ? Mingled with the sounds 
of wreck and storm that faded on his ear, did he 
hear the moans and calls of the strange creatures on 
the Isle of Demons to whose keeping he had com- 
mitted the girl he should have loved and sheltered ? 
76 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 



THE FIGURE IN SMOKY HUT 



SABLE ISLAND, haunt of convicts, pirates, 
and such wild creatures, who were landed 
there centuries ago, is a mere bank in the solitary 
northern seas that froth against it, tearing and 
rebuilding its shore, and in high tide threatening to 
engulf it. There are now no inhabitants except 
the light-keepers, for so many crimes were com- 
mitted there in the old days, especially by wreckers, 
that permanent settlement was prohibited. It is still 
a graveyard of ships, over one hundred and fifty 
having met their end there, but castaways run no 
risk of murder. Strange tales are told there of a 
heroic friar, of one of the fugitive judges who con- 
demned Charles I. to his death, of men left alone 
to perish who became like wolves, and if a sailor 
had to choose a spot to be wrecked upon, this key 
of sand is one of the last to which he would con- 
sent. 

In the eighteenth century the British transport 
ship Amelia, with treasure and a guard, went to 
pieces on the sands of this dread spot, and few sur- 
vived the disaster. Those who did succeed in 
getting to the mainland told of villains who had 
shown false beacons and robbed and killed the 
crew, and their strange tale was promptly investi- 
gated by government. Captain Torrens, of the 
navy, was despatched to the scene of the wreck to 
gain all possible knowledge of it, and, if might be, 
77 



Myths and Legends 

to apprehend all who were engaged in the crime. 
He found the island without trouble. The trouble 
began as soon as he had found it, for his ship ran 
her nose into it, and bade fair to stay, although 
she was eventually freed from the sand and kept 
off at anchor. No inhabitants were found, except 
wild hogs, which the sailors were glad to shoot 
for food. Going over this almost desert in search 
of relics that might furnish some clue to the out- 
laws. Captain Torrens arrived at the squalid shel- 
ter known, probably because of its ineffective ven- 
tilation, as the " smoky hut," and pushed open the 
door. To his astonishment, the place was occu- 
pied. In the dim light he saw a woman, young, 
fair, with pain and sadness in her face. She seemed 
to have but just been rescued from the sea, for her 
long hair and her simple white dress clung to her 
figure, and were as if dripping with moisture. 

** Beg pardon, madame," said the captain, peer- 
ing under his hand to see into the dark, for the 
sun had set in a threatening sky, " but are there 
any others here ?" 

The woman remained motionless, with eyes 
fixed on his own, and said no word. 

** Is it possible that a ship has come ashore and 
I did not see it? Pray, how long have you been 
here ? Can I do anything for you ?" 

The woman raised her hand. The first finger 
was gone, and its stump was mashed and bloody. 

** Ah, you have been hurt. Wait till I bring 
78 



Beyond Our Borders 

my surgeon." And he turned to go back to his 
ship. Hardly had he taken five paces before the 
woman had slipped out at the door — a thistle-down 
floating in the air could not have been lighter — 
and ran away. Happening to look back at the 
moment, the captain saw her. *' Now I under- 
stand," he said to himself. ** The poor creature 
has been crazed by her suffering and by her life 
alone in this place," and calling after, he begged 
her to stop. She did not slack her pace, which was 
marvellously swift and easy, and, fearing that she 
might do some violence to herself, he gave chase, 
telling her that she had no reason for alarm, and 
asking her to accept the shelter of his cabin. The 
woman ran until she reached a pond in the cen- 
tre of the island, where she seemed to dive, for, 
although he searched carefully through the reeds 
and long grass. Captain Torrens discovered no 
trace of her, not even a bent blade to show that 
she had passed. Going back in perplexity, he 
was the more bewildered on seeing at the door of 
the '* smoky hut" the same woman that had disap- 
peared at the edge of the pond. There was some- 
thing uncanny in it. He began to wish that he 
were not alone. Yet he strode resolutely to the 
shanty. A wan gleam of twilight rested on the 
still face of the woman, who looked fixedly upon 
him. He staggered back and became almost as 
pale as she. " Lady Copeland ! It is you !" he 
exclaimed, in a strained whisper. 
79 



Myths and Legends 

The woman nodded. * 

** I thought you were dead." 

Again the woman nodded. 

*' You were killed here — by the wreckers ?" he 
gasped. 

She nodded again. m 

** I understand. They threw your body into the 
pond ? Horrible ! And your finger ? Yes, yes. I 
see. They cut it ofF to get your rings. Rest assured 
I will do all I can for your repose. Shall I search 
for your body and take it to England ? No ? Then 
my chaplain shall read the service at the pond. 
And I will hunt down the villain who robbed you, 
and send your jewels to your family." 

Again the figure nodded, and the captain could 
see that a peaceful smile had come upon the face. 
The wind drove up a little cloud of sand. He 
closed his eyes for an instant to shield them, and 
when he opened them he was alone. Hastening 
back on shipboard, he fetched out the chaplain, 
had prayers said, weighed anchor, and, acting on 
such clues as he had gathered, he set sail for Hali- 
fax, where he recovered from a money-lender the 
gems that had been stolen from Lady Copeland, 
despatched them to her family, then proceeding 
along the Labrador coast he caught the wrecker 
who had slain her and hanged him at the yard-arm. 



So 



i 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE SHADOW OF HOLLAND COVE 

IN 1764 came the first white settler to Holland 
Cove, Prince Edward Island, — a surveyor, one 
Captain Holland, who gave his name to the place 
where he had set up his habitation. With him 
presently appeared a woman, of Micmac origin on 
her mother's side, but her father was a French 
count, belike, for she was tall, distinguished, and 
in mind and bearing unlike the majority of half- 
breeds. Racine was the name whereby she was 
best known. Of her history the captain's asso- 
ciates knew nothing, or wisely professed to know 
nothing. During the winter after his arrival the 
captain was frequently absent on hunting and sur- 
veying trips, and on one of these excursions he was 
gone so long beyond the appointed time that Ra- 
cine undertook to cross the cove on the ice, to see 
if she might not find some token of him or meet 
him the sooner. Such, at least, was the suppo- 
sition. It was an unwise venture, for the ice was 
infirm, and, falling between two floes, she disap- 
peared. Holland mourned her loss on his return, 
and attempts were made to find her body, but with- 
out avail. 

On a still night in the following summer the 
coxswain of the captain's party was wakened by a 
sound of low voices in the sitting-room, and, know- 
ing that all hands had turned in, his curiosity was 
roused. Lighting a tallow dip, he peered into the 
6 Si 



Myths and Legends 

room, and to his surprise saw Racine. Her posi- 
tion made it seem as if she were seated on the 
knees of a figure in the captain's easy-chair. The 
voices were subdued until they were almost whis- 
pers, so that the steady drip of water from the 
woman's clothing could be heard distinctly. At 
the approach of the coxswain Racine arose and 
fled past him into the garden, going as silently as 
possible, yet leaving an odor of sea- damp and a 
trail of moisture along the floor. There was quite 
a pool of brine before the chair. To the specta- 
tor's surprise, the chair was empty. Had it been 
vacated while his eyes were on the retreating 
woman ? He stood puzzled, uncertain, and seemed ^ 
to hear the words, " Why doesn't he come ? I must 
meet him," receding from the open door. Then 
he heard a splash at the shore. This roused him, 
and he called up the house. Captain Holland arising 
with the others. In ten words he told what he 
had seen, and all hurried to the water, but again i 
nothing was seen or heard. There were the pud- J 
died wet, the track of a soaked dress, the openj 
door. Who had been there ? With whom met i 
Still, they think nowadays it was a ghost, and that"! 
all who see it will die of drowning. If you dis- 
believe in spirits and have a faith that you will die! 
in your bed, you may care to watch at Holland Covel 
on the night of the 14th of July, at the hour wheal 
the tide is high. 



82 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE FRIAR OF CAMPOBELLO 

CAMPOBELLO ISLAND sounds well, but is 
prettily absurd, and the change from the 
original and distinctive title of the Passamaquod- 
dies, which was Ebawhoot, is pleasant only to 
people who like weak names. It has more history 
than an island measuring only three miles by eight 
can usually boast, for many are the tales of pirates, 
of wrecks and wreckers, of haunters and of war ; 
as in 1866 the romantic region was menaced by 
all the terrors of bombardment. A band of Fenians 
assembled at Eastport in that year, determined to 
take the island away from Canada, crush its popu- 
lation of eighteen or twenty, and annex it to Ire- 
land ; but they got into a discussion and finally 
didn't. Here Admiral Owen, proprietor of the 
island, used to pace up and down in his gold 
lace and buttons on a quarter-deck that he built 
over the ledges. Here is the rock of the Friar, 
scarred by the shot of British war-ships at prac- 
tice ; for sea-captains were not brought up on In- 
dian legends. This friar was never a monk. He 
is a petrified lover. Foolishly he fell victim to the 
charms of a squaw, and when the husband of his 
copper-colored enchantress discovered the fact he 
drove him into outer darkness. So stony was his 
despair that it completely changed him, and there 
he is at this day : skedapsispenabsku, the stone 
manikin. 

83 



Myths and Legends 

Another accounting for the figure is this. A 
young Indian of courage, and his wife of grace 
and beauty, lived on the cape above the Friar, and 
would have lived happily had it not been for the 
parents of his wife, who not only insisted on living 
with her and being cared for, but on commanding 
her as if she were still unmarried. A trip to St. 
John River having been proposed by the parents, 
the young man refused to go with them or to allow 
his wife to go. She was divided between two 
duties, as she fancied, and was in much grief. 
Neither her father nOr her husband would concede 
any point, and the time set for the journey was 
near. Now, the young man had medicine power, 
and he did what he could to increase it, until, feel- 
ing that he could work his will, he asked his wife 
to walk with him to the shore. While she sat 
there he threw his command upon her, and she 
sank to sleep; then she grew rigid, death -like, and 
soon she was stone. ** I told you I would never 
part from my wife," he said to his father-in-law. 
'^ Come with me and see how I keep my word. 
There is your daughter. She will never move 
or speak again. I look on her and bid you fare- 
well." And, putting all his magic power into the 
effort, he began to lose his human outline, to harden 
and turn gray. And in a few minutes he, too, was 
stone. 

This myth of conversion is wide-spread, and on 
the other side of the continent we find an opposite 
84 



Beyond Our Borders 

phase of it. The Chinooks point to Mount Ika- 
nam as the body of Ikanam, creator of the universe, 
self-petrified ; while on the Yukon, above Klato- 
klin, or Johnny's village, are two mighty rocks 
heaved sheer for hundreds of feet above the water. 
These are husband and wife. Being incompatible 
in temper, the man kicked the woman into the 
plain and drew the river out of its old bed to run 
between them. 

With that infernal spirit of destruction that dif- 
ferentiates men from other animals, a crowd of 
fishermen succeeded in tumbling the Campobello 
husband into the bay, while the British captains 
pounded off the head of the wife with cannon. 
Along come other destroyers who tear up the old 
names and old traditions, set up Jonesvilles and 
Jimsonhursts, and hold five o'clock teas amid the 
ruins of Indian romance. 

TWO MELICITE VICTORIES 

SUNDRY miles of the country watered by the 
St. John — the river of that name in New 
Brunswick, for it is applied to other waters ; in- 
deed, there are not saints enough to go around — are 
and long have been the haunts of the Melicites, and 
although they now wear trousers, read the papers, 
and make a dollar or so a day as canoemen, they 
boast of many achievements in war. Especially 
venomous were the Mohawks, and two of their 
85 



Myths and Legends 

victories against those people were unusual. Near 
Maniac a peninsula juts into the St. John. It is a 
long way around, and a short cut is offered across 
the isthmus. The Melicites knew this and the 
Mohawks did not, and through the device known 
to theatrical managers who give a *' cheap numer- 
osity to a stage army," the invaders were turned 
back and no lives were lost. Finding their enemy 
encamped in force on the shore opposite this point, 
evidently intending an attack on some villages be- 
low that were peopled only by women, children, 
and old men, the braves being absent on a search 
for deer and Mohawks, a little company of six 
Melicites proceeded to multiply itself. The men 
had three canoes, and in them they paddled down- 
stream as fast as possible and as far as possible 
from the hostile camp. But they did not go home. 
They turned around the point, out of sight behind 
the trees, then scrambled across the isthmus, em- 
barked, and came down once more, the boats being 
well strung out. As boat after boat went by for 
half a day, the Mohawks, who had had no idea that 
there were so many hundred Melicites, became 
thoughtful, then sad. They felt that they had been 
lured away on a dangerous errand, and, so deciding, 
they packed up their belongings and returned to 
their own habitations. 

The victory at the Grand Falls of the St. John 
was won by equally clever strategy, but it had its 
tragedy. Indeed, there have been many tragedies 
86 



Beyond Our Borders 

in this gloomy chasm, with its seventy-foot plunge 
of waters, from the times when the Melicites used 
to fling their prisoners over Squaw Rock into a 
black depth two hundred feet below, to these later 
days when lumbermen have been drawn into the tor- 
rent and their bodies never given back to the sight 
of men. Two or three centuries ago, at least, the 
Mohawks descended the river to do injury to the 
people who dwelt beside it. At the mouth of the 
Madawaska they paused for a few minutes to wipe 
a village out of existence. A few of the people 
escaped, but all on whom hands could be laid were 
killed, excepting only a squaw. Her life was spared 
on condition that she would act as their pilot down 
the stream, for they knew that there were dan- 
gers to navigation between them and the populous 
Melicite town of Aukpak. The woman gained 
their confidence by leading them safely over some 
rapids, and, as the current was strong and they were 
constitutionally opposed to work, they roped their 
canoes together and allowed the river to carry 
them. Their guide occupied a place in the first 
boat, and was warned that she would die if she mis- 
led them. Suddenly the shores came together in a 
savage gap, and the current grew more swift. The 
squaw looked straight ahead with impassive face. 
And now a deep roar was heard. She told them 
it was a stream falling into the St. John. Then, 
as the fleet swung about a point, the misty gulf dis- 
closed itself, while a thunder of water stunned 
87 



Myths and Legends 

them. They realized their danger, and rowed with 
frenzy for the shore. But it was of no use. They 
were in the river's grasp. The squaw gave a loud 
cry of triumph, there was a faint crash of splinter- 
ing canoes on the tooth of rock below, then victory 
and silence. 



THE FLAME SLOOP OF CARAQUETTE 

^•TJEAVEN save us all and shield us from 
A X harm," is the prayer of the people who 
live along the Bay of Chaleurs, and especially of 
those Brunswickers who fish upon it, when they 
hear that the flame sloop is on her cruise again. 
Never is that apparition reported but some dweller 
on the bay giyes up his life within a week. The 
sloop is seldom seen except by sailors and fisher- 
men, but the gleam of it penetrates far through 
even stormy air, falling over the landscape in a 
pale, phosphorescent glow, as if the northern lights 
were out, and fading whije one looks about him to 
see where it comes from. Those who see it fairly 
and live to tell about it say it is a sloop-rigged 
craft, all made of fire, — a vision out of hot hell on 
the cold waters of the Laurentian gulf. Its sails 
are sheets of flame, its shrouds are like light- 
ning, its hull, mast, and spars glow like brands. 
On the deck are the crew, charred corpses, stiflly 
walking the red planks, hauling at the blazing hal- 
liar43, ^nd climbing th^ whife-hot shrouds. Vari- 
88 



Beyond Our Borders 

ous are the explanations of this phenomenon. 
Henry Hudson perished lonesomely in the vast bay 
that keeps his name, the victim of a mutiny, and 
this may be a vision of the fate that befell his crew 
in working southward, even though the ship itself 
reached England. Roberval ascended the Sague- 
nay, and in one version of his history he never 
came down. Is this a revelation of what ensued 
among his discontented men ? According to one 
dim rumor, Verrazzano, the Florentine discoverer, 
was killed by Indians near Louisburg, Cape Bre- 
ton, and his crew, attempting an escape, may have 
drifted down the coast to meet this strange destruc- 
tion. The omnipresent Kidd has infested this bay 
at times. 

But a tale has gone the rounds of the Chaleurs 
villages, that shortly after the nineteenth century was 
born a small vessel went ashore on the south side of 
the bay, near Caraquette, New Brunswick. It was 
believed that crew and freight went to the bottom 
with her, until certain articles known to have been 
on board were found to be in the hands of a few 
fellows ashore, who were looked upon askance by 
their neighbors as men who smuggled, diced, drank 
too much, had even sailed in a pirate ship and set 
false beacons inland to lure well-freighted barks 
ashore. So it was whispered about that these fel- 
lows had more knowledge of the sloop's wreck 
than they were willing to impart. There was no 
direct evidence, but the circumstantial proof offered 
89 



Myths and Legends 

by their mysteriously earned property was sound 
enough to take a warrant on. Some leaky-mouthed 
villager told them that the officers were coming, 
and, hurriedly gathering their effects into a small 
vessel of their own, they stood away to sea. Had 
they intended any usual business they would have 
waited until a stout nor'wester had blown itself 
out, but their lives were in hazard, and their first 
hope was to get out of the Bay of Chaleurs. On 
the very next morning parts of their vessel began 
to come ashore in the breakers, and before the sun 
was down the body of every one of those guilty 
men had been flung upon the rocks. This the 
people believed to be a certain indication of their 
crime. What brought them to their end ? Some 
act of carelessness ? The upsetting of a stove or 
lamp ? Or was it a stroke of lightning ? What- 
ever it was, it worked an act of vengeance, and the 
souls of the wretched creatures are doomed to 
haunt the scene of their offence, swathed in such 
flames as the good priests say must be their ever- 
lasting portion. 



90 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE ACADIANS AND EVANGELINE 

WE shall never be quite at the truth about 
the Acadians, the French settlers in Nova 
Scotia, for the reports of the differences between 
them and the English are colored by race and re- 
ligious prejudice. Certain it is, however, that on 
taking possession of the country the British re- 
garded these farmers with suspicion, and that they 
burned their homes and drove them into exile with 
such haste that many families were separated, never 
again to be united. The French set forth that 
this was the act of a tyrannical governor and an 
imbruted soldiery. The English allege that the 
Acadians could not be trusted ; that under guise of 
neutrality they w^ere plotting against their con- 
querors and watching for an occasion to restore 
French rule in the Dominion. At the dawn of the 
twentieth century the breach, though narrowed, 
is still unhealed. Among the charges brought 
against the Acadians is that of angering the savages 
against their new rulers by telling them that the 
English were the men who had crucified Christ. 
Although the farmers along Minas Basin persisted 
that they had no part in the war which culminated 
in the fall of Louisburg under the guns of British 
regulars and Yankee militia, they were ordered, 
under penalties, to aid the winning party. One 
British officer told them that unless they furnished 
wood for his camp he would tear down their houses 
91 



Myths and Legends 

for fuel. Another said, " If you don't take the 
oath of fidelity I will batter your villages with my 
cannon." Cornwallis, on the other hand, assured 
them that if only they would be peaceable and 
loyal they might retain their religion and be '^ the 
happiest people in the world.*' 

Several acts of these French settlers were not 
those of a peace-loving or a neutral people. They 
made trouble at Chebucto; they incited the Indians 
to the raid on Dartmouth, in which many of the 
villagers were killed, hurt, and kidnapped, their 
homes looted, and a third of the settlement laid in 
ashes. At the end of the war the Acadians who 
had escaped arrest refused to take the oath of alle- 
giance and claimed the right to be let alone. Vicar- 
General La Loutre, their clerical leader, so hated 
the Protestants that, like the Russians retreating 
before Napoleon in a later time, he burned one of 
his towns — Beaubassin, a place of a thousand souls 
— that the English might not take it. It was a 
wretched season, and were it not for certain pic- 
turesque incidents attending the deportation and 
dispersion of the Acadians, of whom several spent 
the rest of their lives vainly seeking their families, 
and of whom " three ship-loads were sent to Phil- 
adelphia," one could wish that its record might be 
lost. 

Best known of these episodes is that of Evange- 
line, the heroine of Longfellow's poem. She, at 
least, was an innocent sufferer in the clash between 
92 



Beyond Our Borders 

the races, and it is her story that, more than any 
other factor, has caused the action of the English 
to be condemned with expressions of horror. 
Evangeline Bellefontaine and her betrothed, Ga- 
briel Lajeunesse, were of Grand Pre, whose few 
ruins on the south shore of Minas are a common 
show for tourists. When the British seized their 
village and burned their homes they expected to 
be sent away together, but in the haste and confu- 
sion they were separated, and, without the slightest 
clue to the whereabouts of her lover, Evangeline 
set off on a search for him. She sought from 
Maine to Louisiana, daring roughness, illness, and 
fatigue, and at last reached a home on the Teche 
on the very day that Gabriel had left it to prose- 
cute his equally vain search for her. After other 
years of wandering, broken in spirit, hopeless, yet 
willing to live for the good she might do, Evange- 
line became a nun, and was assigned to a Philadel- 
phia hospital. A pestilence was raging. People 
were dying by hundreds. On a Sunday morning 
she found in the hospital a new victim. It was 
Gabriel. A cry, a kiss: he was gone. Yet life 
was less bitter to her from that moment. 



i 



93 



Myths and Legends 

THE TOLLING OFF GASPE 

WHEN it was learned that the English were 
coming, the good folk of Grand Pre hid 
many of their simple treasures, for to their minds, 
inflamed against the invaders, to be an Englishman 
was to be little else than a robber. Strange sights 
had been seen in the air, strange sounds had been 
heard in the twilight, and the people feared. Know- 
ing that the English were heretics, their first care 
was to save the church properties, the communion- 
cups and host of silver, the embroidered vestments 
of the priest, the sweet-toned bell that called them 
to matins, mass, and vespers and rang the restful 
Angelus across their well-tilled fields. These ob- 
jects were placed in a vault, and, according to one 
version of the tale, were stolen on the very next 
night by the crew of a strange vessel that landed 
here. A gale sped the departing craft, and as she 
lifted across the waves the boom of the bell came 
back across the seething water. Accursed in this 
theft, the vessel got no farther than Blomidon. At 
the foot of that great crag she was shivered into 
pieces, and there among the sands the treasure is. 

But the oftener told story of the bell is that it 
was put aboard a rescue-ship, the Tourmente, that 
it might be carried with the other church belong- 
ings to a chapel near Gaspe. The sight of the rich 
silver, the gemmed stole, the candlesticks, incense- 
burner, and altar ornaments, that might easily be 
94 



Beyond Our Borders 

converted into money, roused the cupidity of the 
captain and his lawless crew : so, instead of deliv- 
ering the treasure at Gaspe, they set the priest 
ashore and sailed away. Standing on the beach, 
the good father pronounced a curse on ship and 
crew, and hardly had he turned away ere the sky 
darkened, a wind came up that increased to a hur- 
ricane before the canvas could be taken in, and 
presently the vessel was hurled against a rock and 
was broken in two. Not a soul survived ; not even 
the girl passenger who was on her way to join her 
lover. And now the tolling bell of a spectre ship 
is sometimes heard by the people of Gaspe. It is 
a vessel squat and square, sailed by a skeleton crew 
in pigtails and petticoat breeches, and the boom 
of the stolen bell, that hangs high on her foremast, 
is so dire in meaning that passing sailors tremble. 
The form in white that wrings its hands on the 
deck is that of the girl who was to meet her lover 
only in death, for his shadow, too, is seen on a 
cliff, feeding a phosphor beacon-fire, and as the ship 
careens below he leaps to her rescue and disappears 
beneath the waves with her in his arms. To see 
this ship as it cruises up and down the gulf, espe- 
cially when it flies by in dead calm or against the 
wind, her binnacle burning blue, her funereal bell 
tolling, is to meet a storm within an hour. If you 
follow that lamp and bell through the deepening 
murk, hoping to gain safe harbor, you will be hurled 
on the same reef on which the Tourmente perished. 
95 



Myths and Legends 

THE RIDE TO DEATH 

AMONG the Indian gardens of fable was the 
lake country of the Blue Mountains, in Nova 
Scotia. A certain reverence for the spirits of its 
woods and waters made the Micmacs who dwelt 
there jealous of the advancing white men, yet they 
had received so many benefits at the hands of the 
French people that they could not refuse help to j 
the latter in their extremity. For Annapolis Royal 
had been thrown into panic on the news that the 
English had burned Grand Pre, seized its farms 
and live stock, and sent all its people captive to 
other lands. Already the English officers had dis- 
armed the Acadians, so that they could not even 
shoot ducks for food, yet with deportation to fol- 
low capture the Annapolitans determined to risk 
the harshness of the wilds rather than the cruelty 
of their fellow-men. Collecting what they might 
of their goods and stock, they set off for the Blue 
Mountains. Sometimes they suffered a lack of 
food, several babes died of hunger and exposure 
and were buried beside the .trail, cattle fell by the 
way, and the nights were filled with dread when 
the growling and squalling of beasts came from the 
bush. Having no guns, they were without de- 
fence, except that of clubs and stones, but they 
reached the Micmac settlements just as a troop 
of English arrived within striking distance. The 
Indians beat back the pursuers and cared for the 
96 



Beyond Our Borders 

Acadians until they could help themselves, sharing 
fish and game, and building huts to shelter them. 
And friendship was strengthened between the red 
men and the white. 

Among the French was a girl named Rachel, 
whose lover, Joseph, had disappeared on the day 
of the flight. Whether he had fled with another 
party or been deported to the southern colonies 
none could tell, but there was a fear that he had 
resisted the English and had been killed. A young 
Micmac sued for RacheFs hand, thinking that her 
heart was free, but she would not listen to him. 
Long he paid his court, but with no effect until 
the young man's father took on a tone half threat- 
ening. He reminded her how the French had 
been befriended by the Micmacs in this flight, and 
what ingratitude she would show if she behaved 
with coldness toward his son. Her own people 
also pleaded with her. Their lives depended on 
the friendship of these Indians ; it was certain that 
she never again would hear of her white lover ; 
in this marriage she would be gaining favors for 
all her people ; beside, the hunter was a well-ap- 
pearing lad, who had been Christianized, and might 
be won to the ways of the Acadians, as well as to 
their faith. Worn with these persecutions, indif- 
ferent in her sorrow, feeling that she had no friend, 
Rachel consented, and a day was fixed for the 
wedding. 

The log chapel was decorated with flowers, all 
7 97 



Myths and Legends 

the people, both pale and dark, gathered to feast 
and dance, the priest awaited the couple at the altar, 
when a commotion arose without, for a young 
Acadian was come, eagerly calling for Rachel. It 
was Joseph. He had been carried with other ex- 
iles to Philadelphia, had but just succeeded in 
finding this remote colony of his people, and was 
filled with disgust and rage at discovering the ap- 
parent faithlessness of his fiancee. In a few words 
the girl explained that the marriage was not of her 
seeking, and begged him to take her away. The 
Indian, who had been haughtily regarding his rival, 
bade him begone, for he would not suffer the dis- 
grace of giving up his wife to any man. The 
older heads were shaken sadly, because matters had 
now gone too far to be undone. The wedding 
must take place. The girl must dress quickly and 
follow her dusky groom to church. In a few min- 
utes five little girls, wreathed in flowers, went to 
her door, whence she was to walk to her bridal. 
The Indian became impatient. He knocked ; he 
called. There was no answer. He flung open the 
door ; the place was empty. Instantly the village 
was in an uproar, the Indians clamoring for pur- 
suit and revenge, the Acadians declaring their inno- 
cence, the old priest urging peace. A few bent 
grass-blades and broken twigs showed that the flight 
of the lovers had been toward the outlet of the 
lakes, and when the Indians reached the water 
Joseph and Rachel were seen in a canoe paddling 
98 



Beyond Our Borders 

down the river with all haste. The pursuers 
quickly embarked and gave chase. Believing that 
capture was certain, Joseph picked up his gun and 
was about to shoot his Micmac rival, but Rachel 
begged him not to fire, for the Indians might revenge 
the act upon the innocent. He dropped the gun and 
resumed his paddle. Presently they noticed that the 
Indians had fallen back, and their hearts bounded 
with a new hope, for liberty now seemed secure ; 
but in another moment they knew the reason for 
this abandonment : the roar of a waterfall was 
heard, and their canoe was whirling toward the 
brink with growing speed. The paddles were 
useless. The lovers' lips met in a kiss ; then, 
clasped in each other's arms, their voices joined in 
prayer, they rode into the abyss, to death. 

In another version a happier ending is reached : 
the runaways leave their canoe at the head of the 
rapid and hide among the trees. The birch is 
found empty and crushed among the rocks below. 
Thus prosperously starting a belief in their death, 
they travel safely afoot to Halifax, where they beg 
the captain of a British ship to give them passage 
to the southern colonies, and in the warm, fertile 
lands of a more peaceful country they live hap- 
pily for long years. 



99 



Myths and Legends 

THE GENERAL WITH AN EAR 

STUDENTS in the university at Fredericton, 
New Brunswick, are in no wise different 
from the pupils of other schools, although it is not 
recorded of them that they ever put a cow into 
the chapel belfry or enlivened a lecture on geology 
with cannon crackers. But they did break the law 
with a gun on several occasions. This gun belongs 
to the university, and has had a way of going oiF on 
unexpected nights, causing the alarm of housewives 
in the town and the utterance of distressing remarks 
by usually moral householders. The students had 
organized a glee-club, which for its own safety's sake 
did most of its singing in vacant farms and grave- 
yards, even defying the ghosts in silks and peri- 
wigs that vex the hermitage, and one night it 
shifted the scene to a place in the woods, having 
noticed certain threatening exhibitions on the part 
of citizens near the places of its other rehearsals. 
As it happened, they had posted themselves beside 
the grave of a certain French general, and they had 
not been at work more than ten minutes before 
this officer scrambled out of the earth with hair on 
end, tears in his eyes, and distraction in his aspect. 
He adjured them by all they held sacred — if people 
who made such noises could hold even the ten com- 
mandments sacred — to go and sing to the others. 
If only they would let him alone he would tell 
them where a cannon had been hidden with which 
loo 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

they could create a less terrible noise, though a 
louder one, than they were engaged in making. 
They accepted the bribe, imperilled their lives and 
those of other people by practising elsewhere, and 
found the gun, so that Fredericton had, for a time, 
two kinds of disturbances instead of one. 



THE DEFENCE OF ST. JOHN 

ALTHOUGH it has always been a mission of 
womankind to astonish and perplex dull 
men, — that is, all men, — one cannot read the his- 
tory of the maritime provinces without a fresh 
experience of wonder and admiration, with occa- 
sional moments of doubt, it is true, at the exploits 
of the sweethearts and wives of immigrants and 
habitants. And beauty is added to their courage by 
the modesty of it all, for not one of them clamors for 
her rights, or summons a band of shrieking sisters to 
suppress the tyrant, man ; though, goodness knows, 
the tyrant often needed suppressing the worst way. 
And it was France — religious, conventional France 
— that gave these daughters to the New World ; 
France, that held the sex in social abeyance and 
reared its girls to dance and sing and work embroid- 
ery, and charm, and pray in convents, but not to 
fight. We had, withal, a dozen Jeannes d'Arc in this 
country in the old days who would have done as 
much for their people as the original Maid of Orleans 
did for hers had they enjoyed an opportunity. 

lOI 



Myths and Legends 

Such was Madeleine, daughter of Lieutenant 
Vercheres, who at the age of fourteen withstood 
a siege, by Iroquois, of ** Castle Dangerous," on the 
Richelieu. With only three despairing men and 
two little boys to aid her, she held off the savages 
for a week, until help arrived from Quebec. 

Such was Demoiselle Poulin, who refused to sur- 
render the forges on the St. Maurice at the bidding 
of the English. 

Such, in quieter, more womanly ways, were 
Helene de Champlain, Marguerite de Roberval, 
and Evangeline Bellefontaine. 

Such was Madame Drucour, wife of the gover- 
nor, who served the guns at Louisburg, firing 
three shots at the English every day, to inspirit 
the jaded soldiers to fresh resistance in the siege ; 
and her bravery won favors for her countrymen 
from the enemy after the surrender. 

But the most conspicuous act of courage was the 
defence of the fort at the mouth of the river St. 
John, New Brunswick, against the brutal, mean- 
spirited Charnisay. In 1643 Charles La Tour 
was a prosperous trader who had set up his station 
at this point, and his neighbor, D'Aulnay Charni- 
say, had a post across the bay at Port Royal. The 
two ruled Acadia jointly, though each had his half, 
so that there was no excuse for friction ; but La 
Tour's material success aroused the jealousy of the 
other, and he worked for his removal. As a result of 
his reports, the king was persuaded to lend himself 



Beyond Our Borders 

to the schemes of the mischief-maker, and author- 
ized him to arrest La Tour for treason. Conscious 
of his right. La Tour declined to be arrested ; on 
the contrary, he strengthened his wails and secured 
enforcements from the Protestant town of Rochelle. 
Charnisay persuaded the king to crush the rebel, 
and when the royal troops arrived he blockaded 
the port against his brother governor. In a fog 
La Tour and his wife escaped to Boston, whence 
he came back with five ships filled with sympathetic 
fighters, and soundly thrashed Charnisay, but care- 
lessly omitted to hang him. 

Smarting under his reverse, the beaten man 
waited until a partial peace had been arranged and 
La Tour had withdrawn on a hunting and trading 
trip, before investing the fort, with an idea of 
starving it into surrender. Two monks, gaining 
entrance to the place, were unmasked by Madame 
La Tour and shown to be spies ; but to express her 
contempt she put them out as if they were not 
worthy of punishment. They returned and an- 
nounced the absence of La Tour to their chief, 
who, fancying that he had merely to fight with a 
woman, made a general assault, only to be beaten 
off. For three days he boldly sent his followers 
to be shot by the woman and her little garrison ; 
then, finding that he was not a match for her, he 
corrupted one of her sentries with money, and so 
bought his way into the fort he could not capture. 
She met him so sturdily after he had entered that 
103 



Myths and Legends 

he oiFered honorable terms of capitulation, and she 
accepted them in order to save her little band ; yet 
no sooner had the papers been signed and the de- 
fenders laid down their arms than this incredible 
creature fell upon them, had them bound, and, 
singling out one of their number to act as execu- 
tioner, hanged them, every one, save him who 
made the noose. He would have hanged the 
woman, too, but that he feared the rebuke of his 
king. As it was, he put a halter on the neck of 
Madame La Tour, and compelled her to see this 
slaughter of her servants and soldiers. Her hus- 
band impoverished, calumniated, and driven into 
exile, her friends and money gone, her mind filled 
with the memory of this outrage, the w^oman lived 
but three weeks after the capture, and Fort La 
Tour, with fifty thousand dollars' worth of plun- 
der, passed into the hands of Charnisay. Strange, 
indeed, was the sequel to this siege. Charnisay, 
in more or less disrepute, — rather more than other- 
wise, — did not live long to gloat over his mean 
victory. He was found strangely dead in a shal- 
low river near Port Royal. And, would one be- 
lieve it ? the successful suitor for his widow's hand 
was La Tour. ** Your husband and my wife dis- 
agreed," said he, ** but that time is gone. Let us 
live in peace." 



104 



Beyond Our Borders 

BROTHER AND SISTER IN BATTLE 

BRAVE as the French were, and skilled in war, 
they forgot much in this country, and in 
various decisive conflicts with the English were 
overmastered in strategy and strength, if not in 
courage. It may be that the imagined remoteness 
of the military works on our frontiers, no matter 
of whose holding, lulled their garrisons into a false 
sense of security, for it is sure that in our day such 
an assault as that of Ethan Allen on Ticonderoga 
or that of Wolfe on Quebec would be out of the 
question. And it was the lack of a guard that led 
to the capture of St. John by the English. The 
attack was made early in the morning, while most 
of the French behind the walls were sound asleep. 
Alarmed by shouts and firing, the soldiers tumbled 
out of their bunks, grasped their sabres and match- 
locks, and had made a sortie before they realized 
that they were undressed, or knew how large a 
force they were to meet. The neglect to post 
guards enough was a fatal one, and no heroism could 
redeem it. 

Among those who served at the guns of the fort 
with furious energy was a woman, and an English- 
woman at that. Two years before she had wedded 
a French officer while on a visit to relatives in 
Paris, and when he was ordered to Acadia she 
elected to follow and share in the hardships of a 
soldier's life in a new land. The rebukes of her 
105 



Myths and Legends 

relatives, the appeals of friends not to side against 
her own country in the impending war, even the 
warnings of her husband that her step involved 
difficulty, if not danger, were of no weight with 
her. Personal love outweighed all else. 

One of the first to fall in the attack on St. John 
was the young French officer, her husband. She 
grieved only for a moment. Rage succeeded re- 
gret. She went from one man to another, shriek- 
ing encouragement and orders, sighting and firing 
the cannon whenever a rift in the sulphur clouds 
showed the red flag of England or the scarlet coats 
of its defenders, and crying for revenge, — a spirit of 
war incarnate. Loud cries, increased firing, and a 
hurry of men told her that the besiegers had forced 
an entrance. The fight was to be hand to hand. 
Wrenching a sabre from the grasp of a fallen offi- 
cer, she pushed her way into the front of the band, 
and, as the storming party appeared, carved and 
slashed lustily. In the smoke and din and pressure 
the invaders hardly knew or heeded that she was a 
woman until one of their lieutenants ran forward 
and grasped the arm of a stalwart trooper who was 
about to lunge at her with his bayonet. *' Stop, 
for God's sake, man ! Spare my sister !" com- 
manded the officer. At these words the woman's 
arm fell, her sword clanged to the pavement, and 
her face turned white. ** Brother !" she mur- 
mured, and sank, half fainting, into his arms, while 
the red-coats, with a yell of triumph, passed through 
io6 



Beyond Our Borders 

the gate and over the walls. Down came the lilies 
of France, and up went the cross of St. George. 
The day was won, and the defender of St. John 
was a woman once more. Neither she nor her 
brother had known that the other was in the bat- 
tle. Her appeals in behalf of her husband's sol- 
diers were heeded, and when the soreness in her 
heart had healed she was married again, to an Eng- 
lish officer, and became the revered great-grand- 
mother of several Blue-Nose families. 



THE GOLDEN DOG 

UNLESS it may be the citadel, nothing is better 
known in Quebec than the Golden Dog. It 
is a gilded relief representing a dog, of doubtful 
pedigree, lying on the ground and gnawing a bone. 
An accompaniment of text informs us, on the ani- 
mal's behalf, — 

Je suis un chien qui ronge Tos, 
En le rongeant je prends mon repos. 
Un terns viendra qui n*est pas venu 
Que je mordray qui m'aura mordu. 

Which has been fairly done into English in this 
manner : 

I am a dog that gnaws his bone. 

I crouch and gnaw it all alone. 

The time will come, which is not yet, 

When rU bite him by whom I'm bit. 
107 



Myths and Legends 

The purport of which in our time would be 
that the dog is " layin' low," like Br'er Rabbit, 
and watching his chance. This panel, let into the 
front of the post-office, pertained to the house that 
formerly occupied its site, the house of the Chien 
d'Or, built in 1735. It passed through many for- 
tunes, for it was at times residence, church, shop, 
post-office. Masonic hall, and coffee-house, and here 
Horatio Nelson met the girl he would have married, 
— landlord Prentice's daughter, — swearing that if 
he couldn't have her he would leave the service ; 
but he couldn't, and didn't, and it may be that he 
fought all the harder for his disappointment. Here, 
too, one Badeau, a merchant, was found hanging to 
a nail, dead. Who put him there, and why, will 
never be known. 

The builder of the place was Nicholas Phili- 
bert, a Bordeaux man, who was seeking his fortune 
here as a trader. He was a decent sort of fellow, 
but, like every one else who had money or the hope 
of it, he was wronged and swindled by Bigot, the 
Royal Intendant, the thirteenth and last who held 
that office. This Bigot was a curious mixture of 
craft and tyranny, greed and recklessness. His 
principal aim in life was to get money, but he gave 
a good many hours a day to spending it. The 
splendor of the entertainments in his palace, with 
its four hundred and eighty feet of front, and his 
generosity to his favorites, were in strange contrast 
to the stony indifference he showed to suffering 
108 



Beyond Our Borders 

among his soldiers and the poor. So constant were 
his drafts on the royal treasury that the Queen of 
France innocently asked if the walls of Quebec 
were made of gold. Although another man was 
the ostensible manager of it. Bigot was the owner 
of the great shop and warehouse where food and furs 
were bought low and sold at extortionate prices, 
and which, bearing its ill reputation as widely as the 
town itself was known, was called '^ The Cheat." 
In times of famine he fattened in proportion as the 
country starved. 

The owner of the Chien d'Or was outspoken in 
his condemnation of the governor, and he refused 
to help him in any schemes of plunder. Bigot 
resorted to sly and small punishments. Whatever 
the injury he did to Philibert, the victim feared 
him too much to retaliate at once, yet the threat 
implied in his golden dog was more courageous 
than direct assault, because it published his enmity 
and invited repression. He gnawed but a dry 
bone of revenge to the last, and never had a chance 
to fix his teeth in the throat of his tormentor, for 
one of Bigot's officers, who had been quartered 
upon Philibert as an annoyance, picked a quarrel 
on a trifle, and spitted him with a rapier on his 
own door-step. One version of the tale has it that 
Philibert's widow placed the golden dog above her 
door as a threat and an advertisement of the wrong 
she had suffered. Be that as it may, Philibert's 
brother — some say his son — came from Bordeaux 
109 



Myths and Legends 

to visit his wrath on the assassin. The murderer 
had fled, but, getting upon his trail, he followed 
him up and down the earth, spending months in 
the quest, until he had run him to his hiding-place 
in Pondicherry, in the East Indies. There he 
challenged the slayer, and, falling upon him with a 
fury that was the wilder for its long repression, he 
cut his heart in two. Nor had things gone well 
with Bigot, for the reports of his misdoings were 
not long in reaching King Louis, who had him 
sent home in arrest, clapped him into the Bastille, 
and appropriated the wealth for which Bigot had 
sinned so industriously. The governor had among 
his considerable harem a certain Madame P., whose 
husband had been sent abroad to discover riches, 
and after his release from the Bastille this woman 
allowed to the fallen magnate a small pension, which 
sufficed to keep body and soul together. So the 
once powerful and greedy and splendid representa- 
tive of France came to his end meanly, with time 
and reason for repentance. 

THE GRAVE IN THE CELLAR 

THE Intendant Bigot built a spacious chateau 
for himself about five miles from Quebec, 
at the foot of Charlesbourg Mountain. The ruin 
of the Chateau Bigot, or Beaumanoir, lasting to our 
time, has borne an evil reputation for spooks, and 
is one of many places thought to contain hidden 
no 



Beyond Our Borders 

treasure. In the cellar is a grave surmounted by a 
stone marked only with a letter C. This initial is 
understood to stand for Caroline. 

In the eagerness of the chase Bigot was separated 
from his companions one evening, and plunged into 
a part of the wilderness he had never before ex- 
plored. His quarry having escaped him, he came to 
a sudden sense that he was lost ; that he had taken 
no account of bearings ; that he knew not which 
way was north, south, east, or west, or whether 
Quebec lay before or behind him. He sank on a 
fallen log to wait until the rising of the moon should 
give some clue to his whereabouts, when his ears 
caught a soft but steady footfall. He held his 
musket ready, for he thought of bears, and, see- 
ing a shape approaching, was about to fire. The 
figure advanced into a little twilit opening, and, lo ! 
it was a graceful and handsome girl, dressed in the 
garb of an Indian. He accosted her in his best 
manner, and prayed her that if she knew any trail 
out of the wood she would lead him back to his 
chateau. This she could, and did, readily enough, 
and, finding the young woman to be even more 
attractive in the light than in the shadow, the 
Intendant persuaded her to enter his home and 
rest. Whether force, fraud, or affection kept her 
there is not known, but she never left the chateau. 
Caroline, for that was her name, was a half-breed, 
the daughter of a French officer and an Indian 
mother. She quickly won a place in what passed 
III 



Myths and Legends 

for the affections of Bigot that had never been 
gained by his other favorites, and in the comfort 
and seclusion of her richly furnished apartments on 
an upper floor she found certain amends for the 
gross and common life of an Indian village. 

She had been installed as mistress here for some 
time, and had grown accustomed to her place. 
Those about her seemingly held her in esteem. 
On a night when there had been no roistering and 
no festivity, when the brook sang its song sleep- 
ily and the moon poured its white light through 
the Gothic windows, the quiet of the house was 
broken by a shriek of agony coming from Caro- 
line's chamber. Bigot, being first to reach it, re- 
ceived into his arms the drooping form of the girl, 
who made an attempt to speak, but, failing, pointed 
to the dagger that had been plunged into her breast, 
then breathed her last. A servant reported the 
brief vision of a shadow on a private stair leading 
to the room. No clue was ever gained to the 
criminal or the cause of the crime. One surmise 
is that it was the father of the girl, who hated 
Bigot. Again, it was fancied that it might be her 
mother, maddened by her shame. It might have 
been some foe of the Intendant, striking him in 
what he believed to be a vulnerable point in his 
usually hard heart. It may have been Bigot. The 
general belief is that the assassin was Angelique 
des Moloises, an adventuress of Quebec, who had 
decided to marry Bigot herself, not that she loved 



Beyond Our Borders 

him, but she wanted to rule New France. She 
was jealous of the sweet-natured Caroline, and may- 
have had reason for bitterness toward the Intend- 
ant. An old version of the story makes her re- 
sponsible for the murder, but has it brought about 
through a gift of flowers to the half-breed girl, the 
bouquet having been poisoned by the Canadian 
Borgia, the notorious La Corriveau, with some- 
thing resembling the acqua tofana of Italy. 

THE MOUNTAIN AND THE SEE 

IT'S of no use to try, you can't get away from it 
in Quebec, — that old yarn about George III. 
and Dr. Mountain. Every guide-book tells it, 
every guide repeats it, and every visitor is supposed 
to laugh the first eight or ten times he hears it. 
Some people pretend that they can whistle it. So 
you may as well know the worst and have it over 
at once. The episcopal see of Quebec was a fat 
benefice, and many prelates were willing to sacri- 
fice toast and tea and other domestic luxuries that 
they might assume the charge of it, for a vacancy 
had occurred, and several eyes looked longingly, 
with anxious side glances toward the king. Among 
the willing ones was the Reverend Dr. Mountain, 
of London, who, having the king's ear one day, 
when George had been greatly comforted by port 
and flattery, made this remark : '* Your majesty 
can fill the see of Quebec by faith." 
8 "3 



Myths and Legends 

*'How, by faith?" inquired the head of the 
Church. 

** You can say, * Be this Mountain removed into 
that see,' and it shall be so." 

George III. meditated for some minutes, and was 
finally about to take his afternoon nap, when sud- 
denly he turned, broke into a roar of laughter, 
merrily punched the clergyman in the back, and 
shouted, ''I see it! I see it! Sea: see. Ha, ha, 
ha ! Well, the Mountain shall be removed to that 
see." And it was. 

The moral of which appears to be to make 
yourself explicit when you converse with royalty, 
and to request favors only after it has had its dinner. 

THE SIN OF FATHER ST. BERNARD 

IN his native France Father St. Bernard was 
merely important enough to be suspected of 
lacking sympathy for the Revolution, without hav- 
ing either the wealth or the title to justify such an 
enmity ; for he was a second son, and it was his 
elder brother who would fall heir to the honors 
and riches of the family. Being a ready and elo- 
quent speaker, and not by instinct a fighter, he had 
accepted the usual alternative for the army, and 
entered the Church. At the breaking out of the 
war against aristocracy and religion in his native 
land, his friends prevailed on him to seek the 
peaceful shores of the New World, and, provided 
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Beyond Our Borders 

with letters to eminent prelates in Quebec, he set 
sail for that city, where he was presently installed 
as chaplain in the convent of the Ursulines. 

The nuns became very prompt in their devo- 
tions when the handsome, dark-eyed, rich-voiced 
young priest entered on his duties, and one of the 
first offices that fell to him was that of accepting 
as a member of the order a young woman of rare 
beauty who, in a season of melancholy following 
her orphanage, had resolved to take the veil. Her 
relatives had tried to dissuade her from this step, the 
mother superior and the priest had cautioned her 
against a haste that she might repent ; but she was 
firm in the decision to which she had held through 
her novitiate, and as Sister Louisa she was installed 
as a member of the holy community. His duties 
often obliged Father St. Bernard to hold interviews 
with this nun. Her modesty, gentleness, and inno- 
cence commended her to his manhood, as her cul- 
tivated mind had appealed to his intellect and her 
piety to his priestly function. At first unconscious 
of the reason, he sought more frequent occasions 
for meeting her than the others, and when at last it 
dawned upon him that he loved this girl the time 
had passed for cure. Often while he ministered at 
the altar his eye roved to the figure he had learned 
to distinguish among all others of the host, and 
he lurked in the shadow of columns, prayerfully, 
greedily watching her as she passed to her devo- 
tions or knelt to the Virgin in appeal for strength. 
"5 



Myths and Legends 

For in her heart the same battle was being fought 
that raged in his. She had read love in his eyes 
and answered it. Nature, that knows no creeds, 
no law, no prohibition, had put her command on 
both, and it overbore their promises to heaven. 
When, with hesitation and shame, he declared him- 
self to her, she left her hand in his and only turned 
away her head. Could it be, he asked, that she 
could forgive him, that she could condone, that she 
could love ? She sank against his breast. In a 
delirium of joy he clasped her in his arms, kissing 
her again and again, until the ringing of the Angelus 
brought them to themselves with a shock. It was 
the last service they attended together in the con- 
vent, for they fled that night, were married, and 
found an asylum in the United States. 

Seven years passed,— years of sometime hap- 
piness, dimmed with regrets and fears. In their 
most blissful hours they were tortured by the recol- 
lection of an unkept trust and broken vows. Spec- 
tres of dishonor walked with them in their garden, 
and dreams of punishment haunted their sleep. 
The time came when the hours of repentance out- 
numbered those of gladness, and their talk fell often 
on the days in Quebec when they were innocent 
and served God with clean hearts. '^ Oh," cried 
St. Bernard, at last, *' is it impossible to conjoin 
the religious life and human love ? Must our pas- 
sions always be our masters? Hapless partner of 
my sin, I pray that you may never feel this wretched 
Ii6 



Beyond Our Borders 

state as I do. God must despise me, for I despise 
myself." 

The violence of this renunciation — for so she 
construed it — astonished and alarmed the wife, 
who, with a sobbing cry, fainted on his shoulder. 
She awoke in a delirium, and several days passed 
before her reason returned to her. Lying on her 
pillows, pale and thin, she lifted her sad eyes to 
him, as he bent anxiously above her, and said, 
faintly, " We have erred in loving, but reparation 
is in our power. We must part. Do not weep. 
Be strong. Be true to your oath." 

It was decided to return. He prostrated him- 
self before the bishop, asking if heaven still held 
mercy for such as he, and the good old man re- 
ceived him into the Church again, as a shepherd 
would receive a strayed sheep into the fold. He 
resumed his robes, and was assigned to missionary 
duty on the frontier among the Indians, who 
learned to trust him, and even held him in affec- 
tion before his days of usefulness were ended. 
His wife, taking again the name of Sister Louisa, 
re-entered the convent as a penitent with a truer 
knowledge of the world than when she had taken 
the veil, and a softer feeling for transgressors. She 
became the most sad, most silent, most pious of the 
sisters, and when she died they buried her, at her 
own request, in the corner of the convent garden 
where Father St. Bernard had first clasped her in 
his arms. 

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Myths and Legends 

LAROUCHE HAD HIS WISH 

ON tithing day Davy Larouche, of St. Roch, 
— a fat, merry fellow, with whom the 
world always went well, — is up betimes, sprucing 
himself at the glass. *' Aha ! you are going to 
see the girls again ?" cries his wife, — " you, who 
were that foolish and bashful that I had to do half 
the courting." 

'' Get along with you," chuckles Davy. ** Don't 
you know this is the day to take tithes to the cure ? 
You wouldn't have me meet his reverence in a 
blouse. If the weather had been a little better 
there would have been more for him, and that 
means more for us. We can stand it, but some of 
the neighbors feel the pinch a little." 

Larouche ate his breakfast, loaded his sacks into 
his sleigh, lit his pipe, and in a contented spirit 
drove off toward the village, singing. The Cana- 
dian habitant is among the few left on earth who 
sing without being paid to. In passing through a 
wood his jocund voice seems to have attracted the 
attention of a man whom Davy had never seen 
before, a stranger to the country, for he was not 
dressed for rough life or cool weather. He was 
a fair-complexioned man, of thirty years, maybe, 
with long locks falling over his shoulders and the 
most beautiful, searching blue eyes ever seen. He 
wore a flowing blue robe, belted at the waist. 
Without knowing why he did so, Davy stopped 
ii8 



Beyond Our Borders 

short in the road, and stared with consuming curi- 
osity, not unmixed with awe. 

*^ Peace be with you," said the stranger, in grave, 
sweet tones. 

** The same to you," stammered Davy. 

'^ Where do you go ?" 

" To the priest, with my tithe." 

*' You had a good harvest, if this load represents 
one bushel in every twenty-six." 

** Pretty good ; but if I could have made the 
weather — ah! then we should have seen a har- 
vest !" 

*' Be it so. Hereafter you shall have such 
weather as you wish." 

The man in the robe stepped aside to make way 
for Davy's sleigh, and the farmer, as he passed, 
turned to look at him once more, but nothing could 
he see of him. He allowed the fat old horse to 
take his own snail pace, he had fallen into such a 
state of wonder upon this promise, and a question- 
ing if the stranger were an angel or a lunatic. 

Next year at tithing-time Davy harnessed no 
horse, but took his offering in a handkerchief. He 
was neither plump nor merry, and he did not sing. 
Midway in the wood he gave a nervous start, for 
the stranger had again stepped from among the 
trees and raised his hand, as in blessing. ** Peace 
be with you," said he. 

** Thank you," answered Davy, scratching his 
head and putting his bundle behind him. " I need 
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Myths and Legends 

it. I'm at odds with all the neighbors, and what 
to do I don't know. They will have it I'm a sor- 
cerer, because every time I've happened to wish 
for a certain kind of weather we've had it. The 
sun has been hot at the wrong time, and the rain 
has been cold at the wrong time. We've had 
drouths and freshets, and the seed has been washed 
out of the earth, and crops have dried and withered 
and rotted and been torn with wind, and I don't 
know what all. The stock hasn't fed as it should, 
and even my family's gone against me." 

The one in the blue robe smiled. " You are 
convinced, then," said he, ** that God knows bet- 
ter than his children what is for their good ? Your 
wishing power is gone, and next year your tithes 
will fill your sleigh again." 

And Davy Larouche trudged on, wondering. 

THE HEART OF FRONTENAC 

IN the court of the Fourteenth Louis there was 
but one man who could rival him in grace or 
looks, at least in the opinion that was whispered 
behind the palace doors. That was Louis de Buade, 
Count of Frontenac. Louis placidly regarded him- 
self as the handsomest man in France, and he had 
a woman-like hatred of a rival. In fact, he was so 
secure in this pleasant self-estimation that it never 
occurred to him to look for a rival until he chanced 
on one of his favorites, Madame de Montespan, in 

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something too earnest converse with this Fronte- 
nac. In that moment his vanity received a serious 
blow. He kept his eye on these two people, and 
put his spies upon them, gaining an increased as- 
surance that it would be for the peace of Paris if 
the impudent fellow could busy himself with affairs 
at some distance from the city. Le Grand Mo- 
narque was not usually suspicious, and the Montes- 
pan had wonderful control over him, but this time 
he was decided, and Frontenac was sent to Canada. 
Three women viewed this exile with varying emo- 
tions. The queen had hoped that Frontenac would 
succeed with the Montespan woman, that she might 
claim a little of the king's attention herself. The 
Countess Frontenac had hardened her heart against 
her husband when she realized that in marriages of 
state love has no place, and that even if she were 
disposed to respect her lord, he cared nothing for 
her. She refused to go with him to Canada, and 
remained at home. As for the Montespan, no- 
body knows whether she was glad or sorry, but, 
whichever it was, she applied herself to ruling the 
king with increased severity, and had Louis been a 
more sensitive man he would probably have made a 
declaration of independence and abandoned her more 
promptly for Madame de Maintenon than he did. 

Frontenac was made governor of Canada, the 
king not caring to proclaim his motive baldly, and, 
while he maintained in Quebec a state worthy 
of his position, his dignities were solitary. He 

121 



Myths and Legends 

was urbane toward his associates and toward those 
who called to see him about matters of state, but he 
never broke his silence respecting affairs in France. 
Louis lived to an aggravating age, his stormy- 
career of war and his wasting ambitions seeming 
but to toughen him, and Frontenac, hopeless of a 
return, though he was allowed to make one brief 
visit to his native land, died in 1698, a lonely old 
grandee. They buried him in the Recollet church, 
near the Place d'Armes. A surgeon removed the 
heart of Frontenac, enclosed it in a metal box, and 
sent it home to his widow. She coldly refused to 
receive it, for in life it had never been hers. The 
next ship took this handful of unfortunate dust back 
to Quebec, where it was placed in the coffin, and 
for a century remained undisturbed. When the 
Recollet church was burned the box containing 
the heart was among the few things that escaped 
destruction. 

THE DEVIL DANCE ON ORLEANS 

WHEN Marie Josephe Corriveau, of Quebec, 
was condemned to death in 1763, by one 
of General Murray's courts-martial, everybody said 
that she deserved it. She had killed her first hus- 
band by pouring melted lead into his ear. Number 
two she choked with a noose, which he succeeded 
in casting off, and after he had forgiven her for this 
discourtesy she beat his brains out. To other 
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Beyond Our Borders 

people it was rumored that she had given subtile 
poisons. Her guiltless old father tried to save her 
by alleging her crime upon himself; but the only- 
result of his plea was to get himself hanged with- 
out saving her. The execution occurred on the 
Heights of Abraham, but the body of La Cor- 
riveau was encased in an iron cage and swung from 
a gibbet near the site of the temperance monument 
at Point Levis. Some say that she was never hanged, 
but was shut in this cage to perish of cold, hunger, 
thirst, and madness, and that her groans and cries 
lasted for several days, growing weaker and weaker, 
until at last only the creak of the chains was 
heard. This creaking was said to be the call of 
the body for interment, and it excited such terror 
that the young men of the district cut it down and 
buried it at night in a spot where, eighty-seven years 
later, it was discovered by the parish grave-digger 
—and sold to Barnum. The cage on being opened 
was found to contain only a thigh-bone. 

But burial did not silence the creature. She 
somehow got out of her cage and her grave and 
walked after people who were late on the road, — 
blue, brown, withered, with tangled locks, an alto- 
gether fearful object. Among these late goers was 
citizen Dube, a truthful man, never timid in the 
daytime, nor at night either, if he could get rum 
enough. It was his fate to be abroad in the small 
hours on the south shore of the river. He had 
prayed for the peace of the Corriveau in passing, 
123 



Myths and Legends 

and, seeing a bluish light over on the island of 
Orleans, concluded that something was astir there : 
so, tethering his horse on a good patch of grass, he 
huddled in his cabriolet and watched the light for 
very comfort. Not but that he knew of the ignes 
fatuiy the fool fires or will-o'-the-wisps, that were 
carried by the devils over on Orleans to lure people 
into swamps and fly off with their souls as they 
were drowning, but this light was brighter than the 
will-o'-th-e-wisps. And now he could see figures 
moving. Their aspect did not quiet him. They 
were of uncommon height and size, were bony, 
hare-lipped, and pig-snouted, had tusks, and flour- 
ished long tails. Had not the night been uncom- 
monly clear and he uncommonly sharp-sighted, he 
could not have seen these handsome fellows at that 
distance, nor could he have heard their remarks 
about him unless his ears had been wide open, — 
proof enough, as he afterward submitted, that he 
was not drunk. The demons, for such they doubt- 
less were, began to dance and sing. Their voices 
brayed and growled and cackled, and they sang a 
fool song to the effect that they would soon have 
Dube for supper. Their master, a huge creature in 
a cap with a spruce-tree on it by way of feather, 
pounded a mighty pot with the clapper of an un- 
blessed bell, holding the vessel up toward the gog- 
gling farmer, to show in what they intended to boil 
him ; but, though he was disturbed, Dube did not 
lose his self-possession. " You rascals," he bawled, 
124 



( 



Beyond Our Borders 

" you'll get none of the pork that lards my ribs for 
your supper." 

They answered only with gibbering laughter 
and capered the higher. Then two fleshless hands 
caught him by the shoulders. It was La Corriveau 
out of her cage. His hair crawled over his scalp 
like worms, and he sweat ice-water. ** My dear 
Francois," squealed the hag, '* do me the favor to 
dance with my friends." 

** You limb of the Old One, is this what I get 
for praying for the quiet of your soul ?" 

She laughed — the sound was like a wind play- 
ing over empty bottles — and butted him with her 
unfleshed head. *' Take me over to the island, 
there's a dear. I must meet them, and only a 
Christian can ferry me, for the river is blessed." 
Here she tickled the unhappy man under the chin 
with her claw-like fingers. Dube pulled away 
from her. '* Get over as best you may, old gal- 
lows-bird," he cried. 

" Dog of a Christian, bring her here, or it will 
be the worse for you," clamored the imps. 

** Yes, my dear ; obey the gentlemen," croaked 
the bare-bones. 

*' But how in the dev — how, in the name of the 
good Sainte Anne" (here a shuddering silence fell), 
** am I to get over ? I have no boat." 

** Then I'll strangle you, and fly across on your 
departing soul." 

Dube saw the blue light flame up, saw the com- 
125 



Myths and Legends 

pany leap in a more frantic dance than before, and 
heard the screech of the vampire as she sprang at 
his throat. He gurgled a prayer and tumbled in a 
heap in his cabriokt. When his senses returned 
to him he sneezed himself into a sitting posture. 
He was alone, and it was a chilly morning. Dawn 
was flushing the east. He reached for his bottle, 
for he sorely needed spirituous comfort, but the 
Corriveau had emptied it. Nor did he fill it when 
he got to town. He was a light drinker after that 
adventure, and died in an odor of sanctity which, 
his neighbors held, was better than that of alcohol. 

THE DEFIANCE AT ELORA 

ELORA, with its cascades, its ravines, and its 
overhanging cliff, — one of the many Lovers' 
Leaps, where an Indian girl stepped into eternity 
to end a hopeless love, — and its buried horde of 
purple wampum, giving rise to tales of hidden 
treasure, is destined to be widely known for its 
romantic and beautiful setting. Of especial in- 
terest is the *' Broken Fall," with a beetling pulpit 
of rock standing against the rush of waters at its 
base, for to this pertains a myth of daring equal to 
that of Ajax. In common with most other Indians, 
and with the Greeks, the Ojibways believed in 
guardian deities of mountains, forests, rivers, lakes, 
seas, and clouds. Nations and people invest their 
gods with their own qualities, so that a military 
126 



Beyond Our Borders 

nation will pray to a fighting god, a money-loving 
race will have messages from their god to get land 
and gold, the god of some tribes is a fiend, the God 
of Calvin was a tyrant, and the God of our own 
time is a God of love and mercy. The Indian ap- 
preciated the world's beauty and lived close to 
nature, yet in loveliness and brightness he saw as 
little that is gentle, that spoke of justice, order, 
law, and love, as if he had been civilized. He 
lived by shedding the blood of animals, and it was 
an easy passage from that to shedding the blood of 
men. Hence he believed in gods that loved de- 
struction, and sacrifices were sweet to them. 

Considering these facts, the courage shown by 
the Ojibway chief who lived in a cave here at 
Elora was wonderful, yet because of it he tri- 
umphed. The manitou of the river, like the spirit 
of Niagara, was angered by the settlement of people 
on its banks, and his voice in the fall roared inces- 
sant protest. Now and again, after rain or snow 
melting, he hurled such volumes of water over the 
cliff that wigwams on the shore were destroyed, 
canoes were swept away, and the Indians were re- 
strained from hunting and fishing until the flood 
subsided. To keep this genius of the stream from 
too serious mischief, sacrifices were made to him, 
the usual victim being an Ojibway girl. Keechi- 
matik, who ruled here in 1750, was struck by the 
modesty and beauty of one such girl who had been 
brought to his cave, bound, that she might be de- 
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Myths and Legends 

voted to the manitou. The people were deaf to 
the appeal of her old mother that she be allowed 
to take her daughter's place, for her life was nearly 
over, whereas the girl had all to live for and might 
become the founder of a noble family. Already 
the river god had seen his intended victim, and 
was howling and hissing his demand that she be 
thrown to his embrace. The elders of the tribe 
advanced to seize her, when the chief sprang 
forward and with raised arm bade them desist. 
*' This maid shall not be given to the god," he 
cried. " I claim her for myself." 

Turning to the fall, the chief resumed, *' Too 
many of our people, O manitou, have we given to 
your keeping, I see you rising in the spray, I feel 
your cold breath on my face ; you have called the 
thunder birds out of the south to strike at us, and 
their black wings are spreading across the heaven. 
I hear your voice in rage, and our medicine-men 
who know its speech tell us that you demand this 
woman for your prey. It shall not be, for she is 
my wife." Cutting the cords that bound her, the 
chief raised her to her feet ; she fell on his breast 
in gratitude, and the people hurried away from the 
coming storm, fearing an instant punishment for this 
act. The tempest passed, and none was harmed. 

What the god could not enforce he could gain 

by fraud. He visited the wife in dreams, charging 

her to slay Keechimatik, because he was faithless to 

her. The husband had gone to the pool to fish, 

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Beyond Our Borders 

Little did he reck of the woman's changed heart, 
for she, under spell of these visions, had concealed 
herself behind the islet in the fall. A twang, a 
whir, and an arrow transfixes the heart of the 
chief. He crawls to his cave to die, while she, 
attempting to regain the shore, is caught in the 
mad current, and the manitou receives her at last 
with a howl of triumph. 

THE MIRACLES OF SAINTE ANNE 

BOATMEN sing prayers and praises to the 
good Sainte Anne; the habitants kneel at 
wayside shrines to her ; they build chapels to her 
memory ; they make pilgrimages to her finger in 
Baie St. Paul ; and well may they do these things, 
for she has been their friend in a thousand perils. 
True, the French have a mediaeval honesty of faith, 
and they pray to many other saints beside, nay, 
are on intimate terms with them. It is recorded 
by the proud old family of Levis, after which they 
have named Point Levis (not Levi), opposite 
Quebec, that when a chevalier of that house was 
about to salute a statue of the Virgin, he heard a 
sweet voice from heaven saying, '^ Cousin, keep 
on your hat." All through old Canada you find 
churches where sacred relics — bits of bone or 
withered toes and fingers — work wonders of heal- 
ing among the afilicted, and a well-known type of 
the votive church is that of Bonsecours, in Mon- 
9 3^29 



Myths and Legends 

treal, where stands an image of the Virgin that 
has for years exercised a miraculous power of 
saving sailors in storms and besetments, and they 
have made many offerings in return. 

Yet, of all churches in the colony, that of Ste. 
Anne de Beaupre (St, Anne of the Bowsprit) is 
most noted. The name is derived from this cir- 
cumstance. Two fishermen were caught in a storm 
on the St. Lawrence, and one was swept overboard 
and drowned. The other, clinging to the bow- 
sprit, swore that if Sainte Anne would help him to 
reach the shore he would build a shrine to her. 
The boat bumped into the land at the site of the 
chapel, whose erection he undertook forthwith. 
This first chapel was finished in 1660; the new 
one, raised by the Pope to a shrine of the first 
order, in 1876. The healing spring was a sepa- 
rate discovery. It was while working here to lay 
the foundations for a house that a habitant, Louis 
Guimont, who had been racked with rheumatism, 
suddenly found relief. Scoffers said that he had 
sweat the disease out by hard work, but Guimont 
scoffed at them in turn, for had not Sainte Anne 
blessed the spring beside the way and whispered 
words of promise to him ? The fame of the spot 
went through the country. Increasing thousands 
go to it on crutches or on litters, and leave them 
there, together with spectacles, bandages, splints, 
pill-boxes, cigars, liquor, — an astonishing array of 
proofs of release from illness and bad habits through 
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Beyond Our Borders 

saintly intercession. Water from the spring that 
bubbles forth beside the church is carried away in 
bottles by the multitude, and is used in the curing 
of all diseases. 

Our saint was the mother of the Virgin Mary, 
and, under authority of the Pope, in 1876 became 
patroness of Canada. On her death, in Jerusalem, 
she was placed in the family vault, whence, in Mar- 
cus Aurelius's day, her coffin was torn by the in- 
fidels, who were trying to efface all sacred relics 
and monuments from the Holy Land. One coffin, 
which they pitched upon the sands, they could 
neither burn nor break open. It was that of Sainte 
Anne. Enraged at the futility of their assaults, they 
dragged it to the Mediterranean and threw it into 
the water. It refused to sink, and swam to the town 
of Apt, in Provence, where it lay buried in the 
sand until a huge fish uncovered it, in the sight of 
a party of fishermen. They took it up, and discov- 
ered it to be the coffin of Sainte Anne, though they 
could not open it, and their bishop walled it up in 
a crypt, where it stayed for seven hundred years, 
with a lamp burning before il. Next the Emperor 
Charlemagne opened the crypt, in obedience to a 
vision granted to a deaf and dumb boy, and re- 
moved the coffin. After some other centuries the 
bones were sent to Canada, and they are now ex- 
hibited at the shrine of Beaupre. 

It was Sainte Anne who saved the wife of Cadieux, 
or Cayeux, though some believe that it could have 
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Myths and Legends 

been only the Virgin herself. Cadieux was a 
French immigrant of education, a soldier and ad- 
venturer, who had either a disappointing love-af- 
fair or had fallen out of favor at court. He had a 
native thrift, withal, wrote pleasant verse and music, 
was popular with all sorts in the New World, and 
traded with the Indians, to his own advantage, 
when he went to live beside Calumet Falls, near the 
present village of Bryson. The Ottawas thought 
so much of him that they gave him one of their 
girls to wife. While these two were packing furs 
into their canoe for a semi-annual shipment to 
Montreal, rumors came to them of an approach of 
the hostile Iroquois, in war-paint. Hastily finish- 
ing the loading of the boat, Cadieux committed it, 
with his wife and two others, to the torrent. The 
oarsmen were skilled, but in the rapid and danger- 
ous stream their address would have gone for naught 
had not the wife prayed to Sainte Anne for guid- 
ance. Instantly a figure, shining, silvery, misty, 
appeared before the prow, as if it were shaped 
from the spray, and, closely following, as it led 
this way and that, past shoals and rocks and eddies, 
the rowers brought the canoe to quiet water. Nor 
did the saint desert them then, but shone before 
them all the way to Montreal, where they went 
thankfully ashore, sold their furs at a good figure, 
and did not forget the Church when they received 
their money. 

But how fared it with Cadieux all this time? 
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M 



Beyond Our Borders 

Heavily. Fearful lest the canoe should be seen and 
fired on, he and an Indian friend remained to drive 
back the invading Iroquois. He likev^ise should 
have invoked a saint, but he v^as too busy and eager 
to remember his duty, so his patron was forgot- 
ten. When the marauders appeared, the tv70 fight- 
ers dodged from tree to tree, shooting from differ- 
ent points and giving to the enemy an impression 
that a considerable force was standing against them. 
Every shot brought down a man ; but Cadieux's 
Indian friend was slain and his wigwam was burned 
before the band retreated. Knowing that it was 
likely to return, the white man fled into the forest, 
and died there of hunger, exhaustion, and *' the 
madness of the woods." His last energies were 
given to writing *^ The Lament of Cadieux" on a 
large sheet of birch bark that was clasped to his 
breast when the rescue-party found him. It is a 
sad song that is often heard on the river, where it 
is sung by the '* shanty-men." His memorial cross 
has been cut away by lumbermen for sacred relics, 
but the spoilers have tried to make good the loss 
by carving votive crosses on the neighboring trees. 
Cadieux's *' Lament" is a poem of some length, 
beginning in this fashion : 

Petit rocher de la haute montagne, 
Je viens finir ici cette campagne. 
Ah ! doux echos, entendez mes soupirs ; 
En languissant, je vais bientot mourir. 



^33 



Myths and Legends 

TADOUSAC BELL AT MIDNIGHT 

TADOUSAC, which stands where the black 
Saguenay rolls from its lonely canon into 
the sea-like breadth of the St. Lawrence, was one 
of the early trading and missionary stations of the 
French, for this bleak region was rumored to be rich 
in mineral treasure. Cartier landed here in 1535, 
and told this thumper after reaching home : ** In 
ascending the Saguenay you reach a country where 
there are men dressed like us, who live in cities, and 
have much gold, rubies, and copper." He wanted 
to be governor, you see. The first stone building in 
America was put up here, and immediate measures 
were taken to get the gold and rubies away from 
the Indians. Poor creatures ! They had no use 
for gold so long as they could have iron, and as to 
a ruby, they never saw one. They did not even 
have bones to gnaw sometimes, for as you pass 
along the Saguenay they show the Descente des 
Femmes, down which the squaws came one winter 
and made their way over the ice to a friendly set- 
tlement, where they got food and carried it to the 
bucks who were starving at home because they 
were too dignified to work. These Indians were 
early reformed, and they loved their helpers and 
teachers, and so long as the body of Father La 
Brosse lay in the little church at Tadousac the 
faithful red men, the Montagnais, who had so often 
listened to his preaching, never passed up or down 
134 



Beyond Our Borders 

the Saguenay without stopping here to pray. They 
would fall to the floor and talk to the dead man 
through a little hole in his tomb, and they fancied 
whispered answers of advice or comfort. This 
custom ceased with the removal of the remains to 
Chicoutimi. 

Pere La Brosse, last of the Jesuits at this settle- 
ment, was taller than common, strong in spite of 
his seventy years, and, with his white hair falling 
over his shoulders, was a man of distinguished 
aspect. The tale of his death is still told among 
his people, though it occurred more than a century 
ago. He had been busy among his converts all 
day, and as night fell he went to the trading-post 
and passed some hours in pleasant talk with its offi- 
cers. As he arose to leave he looked with a sad 
smile over the little company, and said, ** Good- 
by — forever. This is the last of the world for 
me. At midnight I shall be no more. The bell 
on the church will tell you so. Come to me, if 
you will, but please not to touch my body. I desire 
Messire Compain to bury me. You will find him 
waiting at the Isle aux Coudres. It will storm, 
but do not fear. When you go for him your boat 
shall be unharmed. Farewell, and benedicite." 

He was gone. The men stared at one 'another 
in amazement. Some laughed nervously and said 
that the priest was joking. One of them drew out 
his watch and looked. The time wore on. Their 
talk flagged, a silence fell, and every face grew anx- 
135 



Myths and Legends 

ious. The watch marked twelve. Boom ! boom ! 
went the bell — slowly, — rung by no human hand, 
— tolling for a passing soul. All started violently, 
and every face was white. Then, in a kind of 
panic, they hurried to the church. Father La 
Brosse lay before the altar, his hands clasped in 
prayer, yet held before his face, as if he had been 
dazzled by a great light. He was dead. They 
watched in the gloomy place until dawn, when four 
hardy men offered to fetch Compain. A storm had 
sprung up, the ice was crashing and piling, and it 
was an ugly sea they had to face, but a lane of 
smooth water opened along its frothing surface and 
they reached the Isle aux Coudres, sixty miles 
away, in safety, marvelling. Messire Compain was 
awaiting them on the rocks, breviary in hand. He 
knew, he said, why they had come, for the bell of 
his church, also, had struck at the death hour, and 
a whisper in the air had told him what had befallen. 
So he went with them to Tadousac and did his office. 
And they learned afterward that the bell of every 
mission where Pere La Brosse had served during 
his busy life had tolled, untouched, that night. 



136 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE BELL OF CAUGHNAWAGA 

STUDENTS of our history are familiar with 
the incidents of the raid on Deerfield, Mas- 
sachusetts, on a winter night in 1704, wherein 
forty-seven of the Puritans were killed, very few 
got away, and one hundred and twelve were cap- 
tured, to be transported to Canada. Only one 
house escaped burning and pillage, and that was 
defended by seven Englishmen, whose wives cast 
bullets while the men picked oiF the French and 
Indians through the windows and loop-holes. In 
the march to Canada several of the captives, who 
showed signs of illness and weakness, were promptly 
slaughtered. For the brutality exhibited in this 
** war" the French leader. Major de Rouville, has 
been greatly blamed, but it is likely that he was 
unable to control his savage allies after they had 
tasted blood. Rev. John Williams, pastor of the 
Puritan flock, lost his wife and two of his children 
by murder on the long walk, yet when his freedom, 
his children, and a pension were offered to him if 
he would join the Roman Church, he refused. All 
the captives were obliged to attend mass, however, 
and twenty-eight of the Puritans chose conversion 
in preference to continued suffering, and, as the 
chronicler quaintly puts it, this ** kindred blood 
now rattles bad French in Canada, or sputters In- 
dian in the North and Northwest." The French 
treated their prisoners with kindness, allowing sixty 
137 



Myths and Legends 

of them to return on payment of ransom. The 
little daughter of Mr. Williams was kept by the 
Indians and adopted into their tribe. When de 
Rouville returned, fivQ years later, to repeat the 
raid on Deerfield, he was soundly beaten. 

But this old story is only preface to another, less 
well known. Father Nicholas, of Caughnawaga, 
had secured from his barbarian congregation enough 
skins of beaver, foxes, otters, and the like to send 
to France and with them buy a bell for his church. 
The ship that brought it was captured by the Eng- 
lish in 1703, and the bell, after being landed in 
Salem, was sent to Deerfield meeting-house, where 
it solemnly tolled to sermons and to prayers, gave 
note of death, and sounded alarms when fire broke 
out or hostiles threatened. The ** popish" legend 
on its side was chopped and filed away. To have 
their bell thus fall into the hands of enemies of 
their Church was more than the Indians could en- 
dure, and it was the thought of this sacrilege rather 
than race hatred which lent fury to the arms that 
wielded the knife and axe. Father Nicholas ac- 
companied the raiders and secured his treasure after 
Deerfield had been laid in ashes. It was carried as 
far as Lake Champlain and buried. Then, when 
spring had released the land, a company of young 
communicants dug it up and carried it to its destina- 
tion, the Saut St. Louis Church of Caughnawaga, op- 
posite Montreal. As they emerged from the wood 
bearing this burden on a pole, its clapper pounding 
138 



Beyond Our Borders 

joyously, the people in the village, who had never 
heard such a sound before, sprang up, crossed 
themselves, and cried, in solemn exultation, '* It is 
the bell !" They v^ent forth in glad procession, 
wreathed it in flowers, and took it to the church, 
where for long years it called the faithful Indians 
to mass and vespers. 

THE MASSACRE AT BIC 

FEW parts of the inhabited north country have 
escaped blood-baptism. Causes that in our 
day would lead to nothing more than a rival politi- 
cal convention, or a few editorial shrieks, or the 
consumption of Bowery fire-water and some result- 
ing black eyes, were in the old days reasons for 
murder. No man knew when he was safe, and 
usually he wasn't. If a brave from South Molunkus 
looked cross-eyed at the warrior from Memphre- 
magog when he met him in the woods, the insult 
or the menace was to be atoned for only by the 
consumption of South Molunkus by fire, the scalp- 
ing of all adults found there, and the kidnapping of 
the children. The Iroquois going down the St. 
Lawrence on one of these errands of objection to the 
Souriquois saw ahead of them on one of the islands 
of Bic, opposite the debouch of the Saguenay, a 
number of canoes and moving figures. Recogniz- 
ing the people as their enemies, they plied their 
paddles with energy, to fall upon them before they 
could escape. It was a hard fate for the Souri- 
139 



Myths and Legends 

quois, for they were mostly women and babes, in- 
capable of defence, and they had not canoes enough 
for even an attempt at flight: so they huddled into 
a cave and prepared to slay the first who should 
enter. The Iroquois landed, traced the Souriquois 
to the cavern, were greeted with stones and clubs, 
and, unable to guess how many might be concealed 
there, they prudently resolved to take no chances. 
Gathering drift-wood, they piled it before the cave, 
built a fire, and heaped on grass, weeds, and leaves 
that made a dense smoke, which blew into the cave 
and suffocated all within. But this mean victory 
was dearly won, for, on sighting the war-party up 
the river, five Souriquois had gone to their villages 
on the St. John for help, and, defying tire, thirst, 
and hunger, a large band of men hurried back with 
them to the St. Lawrence. It was too late, of 
course, to rescue their sisters, daughters, and chil- 
dren at Bic, but with an Indian all times are ripe 
for revenge. The murderers, having started on the 
return march with a false belief in security, relaxed 
their guard, and during an absence on the hunt the 
canoes they had hidden among the bushes on shore 
were seized, together with their load of provision. 
Thus set afoot, hundreds of miles from their homes, 
they were at the mercy of their pursuers. The 
Souriquois hung on their march, and ere many days 
had harried them all to death. Human bones have 
been found on the Islet au Massacre, in the Bic 
group. 

140 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE DOOM OF MAMELONS 

ALONG the lower Saguenay are strange, bare, 
rounded rocks, the ruined foundations of 
old mountains long since shaken down by earth- 
quake and ploughed away by glaciers, and heaps of 
sand, the erosion of other hills. It is from their 
name that the whole district is known as Mamelons, 
meaning the place of great mounds. For a cen- 
tury and more it had been prophesied among the 
Leni Lenape that if any princess of their tribe 
should wed a white man war and defeat would fol- 
low, and the tribe would reach its end at Mame- 
lons. They had come to believe that where the 
European landed the red race would look its last on 
the sun. For a thousand years war was waged 
across these wastes between the Montagnais, or 
Mountaineers, and the Eskimos of the frozen north- 
land. The Montagnais were helped by the Nas- 
quapees, a small, fine-featured people, keen of 
sight and smell, disbelievers in the powers of 
medicine-men, yet a folk who called up the dead, 
for they were mediums and translated the messages 
of spirits. They claimed to have come long before 
out of the East, — Basques, or Iberians. In the last 
great fight between the red and the yellow men at 
Mamelons there had been omens : a raven had 
been on the moon (an eclipse), and the sun had 
risen red. Scorching heat lay on the sand, so that 
in the battle many tried to cool themselves by 
141 



Myths and Legends 

drawing the dead upon them, for the sake of their 
shadows. Knowing it was to be the last of many- 
great battles, the dead hurried to the help of their 
friends, and for hours cries and tramplings sounded, 
and strange buffetings were felt from viewless hands. 
Hundreds of feet below, the Saguenay foamed red, 
and still the heat increased and the copper sun 
shone fainter. In the height of battle the earth be- 
gan to rock, ashes sifted out of the sky, or, gather- 
ing moisture from the sultry air, came down as mud. 
Darkness fell ; then, with a hollow roar and crash, 
a long-pent volcano in the north burst into erup- 
tion, and every man who had stood on the heaving 
earth was flung down into his own or his enemy's 
blood. In the dawn it was seen that only two on 
the battle-field were alive, and they the chiefs of 
either party. Sadly they made the sign of peace, 
and the Eskimo set his face northward, nor did he 
and his tribesmen ever return to vex the Laurentian 
people. 

The Leni Lenape chief had a daughter who at a 
later time gave herself to a white lover at the old 
chief's home near Cape Eternity. When they 
left it to go down the Saguenay they were nearly 
caught in the fire that raged from Lake St. John to 
Chicoutimi and that spread over one hundred and 
fifty miles of forest in seven hours, but they plunged 
into the dark flood, gained their boat, and so in 
time reached the French priest at Mamelons, the 
place of doom. The wedding was to be at once. 
142 



Beyond Our Borders 

They approached the altar gravely, he strong, con- 
fident, she pale and oppressed. When she should 
have spoken the v^ords that would bind her to the 
husband, as he pressed the ring on her finger, the 
girl looked strangely into the east. Her pallor 
intensified. She had forgotten where she stood. 
For she saw the millions of the old Iberian race 
marching through time, carrying their kings and 
queens enthroned and lifting up their gods. And 
of all the hosts she was the sole survivor in this 
western world. The land henceforth belonged to 
the white people. The chapel bell tolled. It 
tolled the passing of a soul. It told the passing of 
a race. 

THE REVENGE OF HUDSON 

AFTER the mutiny that resulted in the de- 
parture of the Discoverie from Hudson 
Bay, leaving her commander, Henry Hudson, his 
son of the same name, and two or three followers 
afloat on its lonely waters, it was supposed that all 
the occupants of the frail and unprovisioned boat 
perished during the winter, — drowned, perhaps ; 
crushed in the ice ; starved ; killed by wolves, 
bears, or savages. Tradition, however, records 
the finding of a white-faced lad with yellow hair 
on the great bay's eastern beach. Whether he had 
been wrecked there or had wandered from some 
shelter, seeking food, the Indians who found him 
143 



Myths and Legends 

lying on the pebbles could not tell. On his breast 
were tattooed the letters " H. H." in red ink. 
The men presently took him to their lodge and 
revived him, for the boy was exhausted and had 
been poorly fed, not ill, and it was not long be- 
fore he became as one among the tribe, — nay, one 
above the tribe, for among the beliefs of the peo- 
ple was that of a white Messiah with yellow hair 
who should come to them in a strange boat and 
aid them in their arts and lead them in their bat- 
tles. And they soon came to know him as ** the 
white god," for he was wise in council, just and 
demanding justice, prudent, and his teaching and 
example made them happier and better. He grew 
to a great size, was quick in the hunt, invincible in 
fight, and he married the daughter of a chief. He 
differed from the Mistassini, among whom he thus 
became a leader, in that he was not brutal or re- 
vengeful. After a battle, so that the cause had been 
won, he ministered to the enemy, and sent them to 
their homes with food, to be his friends. 

In one of the hunts that took the men to the far 
shores of Ungava Bay, for seal, the people reached 
the water on a day of storm. Great was the 
wonder at the spectacle of a ship with broken 
rudder and torn sails that was driving toward the 
land. A monster wave lifted her and flung her 
with a crash on the beach. As the wave receded 
a figure scrambled along the bowsprit, leaped waist- 
deep into the frothing sea, and half swam, half 
144 



Beyond Our Borders 

waded, to dry ground. He was the sole survivor. 
A giant he was in size, and he bore a battle-axe. 
As he saw the red hunters gathering curiously about 
him he frowned and raised the weapon, but with 
accord they dropped the points of their seal-spears, 
to show that he was in no danger from them. For 
even among enemies, the man who is saved by an 
act of Providence must be spared, lest by persisting 
in his harm the anger of the Great Spirit be 
aroused. To this sacredness of miraculous escape 
were due the safety of Washington at Braddock's 
defeat, and that of Major Rogers after his apparent 
leap down Rogers's Slide. The " white god" ad- 
vanced with a smile and open hand to meet the 
shipwrecked one, but as he came before him he 
stopped and searched his face, his own countenance 
turning hard and gray and his eyes kindling fiercely 
as he looked. Then he tore aside his fur jacket 
and showed the letters ^' H. H." burning on his 
breast. The stranger started back in fear, his legs 
shook under him, his axe hung in a nerveless hand. 
Then he fell on his knees and begged for mercy in a 
tongue that the Indians did not comprehend. The 
** white god" spoke never a word, but he seized his 
own hatchet from his belt, and with all his great 
might he struck the stranger on the head, cleaving 
him to the chin. Then, turning to his people, he 
said, *^ He was my father's murderer. Fling his 
body into the sea, and may he find hell there." 



145 



Myths and Legends 

KENEN'S SACRIFICE 

BOIS BLANC, on the Canadian side of Detroit 
River, was so named for the white wood 
that grew there, and that was stripped away under 
a supposed military exigency in 1837. This was 
the place in which Tecumseh waited till he had 
learned the issue of the battle on Lake Erie, and 
when General Proctor would neither stay to defend 
himself against the Americans nor allow the braver 
Tecumseh to occupy the fortifications in his stead, 
he scornfully charged upon his red-coat ally that he 
was *' a fat dog sneaking off with his tail between 
his legs, after making a show of courage." The 
military importance of the river was recognized 
early, and for a long time it was doubtful if the 
garrison at Fort Pontchartrain would be kept at the 
present site of Detroit or moved across to new 
works at Bois Blanc. Had this removal occurred, 
Detroit might at this day have been a village and 
Bois Blanc a city. A French mission for the 
Hurons was established here, but after the English 
had resolved to take the land their agents turned 
these Indians against their teachers, and nearly pre- 
cipitated a massacre of the French troops. 

White Deer was the daughter of one of these 
Hurons who had died on a mission of policy to 
Montreal, while her mother, a white woman, had 
been buried not long before. Fathered and moth- 
ered by the whole village, the girl grew up in the 
146 



Beyond Our Borders 

afFection of all. She had the beauty that is often 
the gift of half-breeds, and many of the young 
braves, and some of the old ones, looked on her 
with longing. After their fashion they threw little 
sticks in her path when they saw her coming, for 
when a maid was not averse to the attentions of a 
gallant she would pick up the stick he had thrown. 
White Deer stooped to none of them, although she 
lingered near those of Kenen, a tall, strong war- 
rior, young and handsome, and he was thereon 
mightily encouraged, so that he followed the girl 
about and gathered berries for her, and in other 
ways showed that he would like to wed her and 
have her wait on him. The gossips had it all 
fixed, even to the day of the wedding, when Kenen 
came into camp one morning with a white man 
on his back. He had accidentally wounded the 
stranger while hunting, and was in anxiety lest 
he should die, and the French at the fort, when 
they heard of the shooting, avenge it -on the in- 
nocent. 

White Deer took her turn at nursing the injured 
one to health, and, as he was a man of well-stored 
mind and soft manner, the white blood in her veins 
declared itself, and she looked into his eyes as she 
had never looked into Kenen's, and saw her happi- 
ness there. More than suspicious of loss in her 
affections, the Indian dogged them sullenly from 
place to place, and at last came upon the young 
man kneeling at her feet and kissing her hands. 
147 



Myths and Legends 

Their troth was plighted. Kenen launched on the 
man a scathing rebuke for his ingratitude, and 
ordered him to seek his own people at once ; then 
he turned on the girl and poised his knife at her 
breast. She looked up at him. *^ No, no," he 
cried, and flung the blade into the river. *^ Kenen 
is like the tempest in his strength, but the light- 
ning of his anger cannot strike the White Deer." 

Not long after this a war broke out between the 
Iroquois and the French, and among the captives 
taken by the Indians was the white man whom 
Kenen had shot and the girl had saved. He was 
condemned to the death by fire, and had been tied 
to the stake, when a tall man dashed through the 
shrubbery and stood beside the captive. 

^' Hold !" he cried. ** You have heard of Kenen, 
the Huron, for he has the scalp-locks of your people 
at his belt. Many an Iroquois has felt the bite of 
his axe upon his head. Kenen could take the life 
of more than one of you even now, and he will do 
so unless you heed his words, for he comes before 
you as a willing prisoner to take the place of this 
captive. Let him go to his people. Kenen is a 
prize more worthy of you. Go, white man, com- 
fort the White Deer, who waits and weeps for 
you." And, slashing the cords at his feet and 
wrists, he set the captive free. ^^ Go, while your 
path is clear. My canoe is there." With vague 
words of thanks the rescued one staggered away. 
Some would have followed, but Kenen stood against 
148 



Beyond Our Borders 

them like an oak, and to have chased the pale-face 
would have cost at least one life, so they waited. 
When the plash of the white man's paddle sounded 
up from the river, Kenen flung down his axe, 
walked to the stake, and folded his arms. And as the 
white man sped away toward his bride a great pain 
filled his heart, for he saw the blaze of fagots among 
the trees and saw the forms of dancing devils cir- 
cling the fire. 

THE CALLING OF ZOE DE MERSAC 

A SPECTRAL hunt, like the wild chase in the 
Black Forest by Wotan and Frau Holle, 
startles the people on the Canadian shore of the 
Detroit. At certain intervals a dog trots north- 
ward over the water, a black dog with drooping 
ears. Again, it is a phantom boat, rowed by twelve 
fierce and silent men, also going north. Once in 
seven years a gaunt horseman rides north, followed 
by dogs, along the western sky, at sunset, and the 
people shudder, for they know that among those 
who see the spectre one must be in his grave within 
a month. So at least it proved when Sebastian 
Lacelle hunted near his home at Askin Pointe. He 
was a sportsman by instinct, ** born with a gun in 
his hand," they said, and on one of his forays he 
had wounded a deer and followed it through the 
wood at top speed, to get another and a final shot. 
Soon he came to a clearing, and there was his 
149 



Myths and Legends 

deer, trembling and looking around at him with 
innocent, frightened eyes. He had slaughtered 
hundreds of animals for sport. He had bent their 
heads upon their shoulders and cut their throats 
while they looked into his face, inquiring, beseech- 
ing, astonished. He had pounced on them in their 
death-throes and clubbed and stabbed them. Why 
did he not do so now ? Because a pretty girl knelt 
before the door of a cabin, and the deer — it was 
her pet — lay on the ground, bleeding, panting. She 
was lamenting and caressing the pretty creature, 
while she tenderly dressed the injury. Lacelle felt 
a strange tug and softening at his heart. He doffed 
his hat and oiFered some clumsy explanation with 
a hope that, as he had supposed the animal a wild 
one, he might be forgiven. As she lived in a time 
when a request for mercy for an animal would 
have been received with jeers and laughter, it was 
natural that Zoe de Mersac should grant the par- 
don with at least a pretended willingness, and, as 
both had lived a half-wild life, they soon found 
plenty of matter for easy talk. The hunter went 
to the woods again next day, and yet again. Their 
talks were longer and their voices lower at each such 
meeting. Yes, they loved and were happy. 

On the day before the wedding, when the people 
were discussing at their doors the way the chasse 
galerie had swept by on the night before, the girl 
was seized with trembling, and her heart shook. 
She told her fears to her lover. Surely, something 
150 



Beyond Our Borders 

was impending. His gun was flung on his shoulder. 
He laughed at her. To-morrow all would be well. 
He was ofF for one more hunt, to celebrate his last 
day as a bachelor. Yes, he would be careful. He 
was always careful. See, the ducks were plenty on 
the river. Wouldn't a nice plump one look well 
at the wedding dinner? She besought him with 
tears to stay. He kissed her, and laughed again, 
** Dead or alive, I'll be back in the morning." 

At daybreak Zoe went to the shore, unable to 
rest, yet cheered by the dewy freshness of the 
landscape, the softness of the sunshine, the chorus 
of birds, and, sitting on a boulder, — one of those 
great rocks that Hiawatha had hurled at his father 
in the long fight, — she waited long ; but Sebastian 
did not come. Once, indeed, it seemed as if she 
heard a sigh, and a cold touch fell upon her bosom, 
so that a chill went through her, and she fled, 
frightened, to the house. All day long she waited 
in her bridal dress, despairing, her anxious parents 
and puzzled guests about her ; but he did not come. 
At the fall of the dark she went out to the shore 
again, alone. It had grown windy and threatening. 
Ah, God ! how the spectre hunt went by that 
night, with cries and howls and whistling ! The 
north must have been crowded with spirits. A 
boat-like cloud whirled past. As it went into the 
north she saw the leap and quiver of the aurora 
borealis, — the flames that pour from the end of the 
earth, for there the old world-fire has never been 
151 



Myths and Legends 

put out. And again the wind shaped itself into 
words, like his voice : *^ I will come for you in a 
year and a day." She went back to her home. 
No tears were in her eyes. The cold spot on her 
bosom would not be warm. Even her heart seemed 
colder. 

In a year and a day the dawn broke fresh, and 
Zoe asked to be dressed and taken to the river in a 
chair, — it was so long since she had been out in 
the sunlight. Painfully, carefully they clothed her 
wasted form. Her face was white, save for one 
red spot on the cheek, but she smiled as they lifted 
her across the threshold, and she looked toward 
the cloudless sky in rapture. For some time she 
sat there with her parents, bright and happy, as it 
seemed. Vapors began to gather and drift up the 
river toward the north. She eyed them with a 
curious expectancy. Somewhere was heard the 
hollow baying of a hunting hound. A cloud 
shaped like a boat drove past on the breeze. Zoe 
looked up with a joy in her face that was wonder- 
ful to see. ** Sebastian !" she cried, and stretched 
forth her arms. The others looked into the air, 
wondering. When they turned to her again they 
wondered no less at the great calm that had come 
to her, — a calm never more to be broken by the 
storms or accidents of this world. 



152 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE HEADLESS DESERTERS 

TWO soldiers of the British garrison on Drum- 
mond Island, of the Manitoulin group, were 
homesick. They had been stationed at this lone- 
some post for several years, after the war of 1812 
was over, and, having neither the excitements of 
battle, the pleasures of frontier life, nor the com- 
forts of home, they chafed at their restraints and 
their remoteness from such of their kind as they 
most valued. They resolved to desert. Lake 
Huron, between the island and the shores of 
Georgian Bay, was frozen. They would cross to 
the mainland, follow a trail to Toronto, gain 
United States territory, and take ship for England. 
On the first clear night after coming to this de- 
cision they escaped. The commander of the post 
was a martinet whose severity was in large measure 
responsible for the discontent among his men, and 
he determined to use sharp remedies to prevent 
this homesickness from becoming contagious. No- 
tice was posted at the barracks that twenty dollars 
apiece would be paid for the return of each run- 
away, dead or alive. Some black looks were bent 
on the commander, and some mutinous talk was 
heard in barracks, but what of that ? Soldiers were 
cheap, and of little more account than cattle, in his 
opinion. 

A camp of Indians neighbored the military set- 
tlement, and the savages often visited the garrison 
153 



Myths and Legends 

to sell game or pick up scraps of bread. It was 
not long before they knew of the reward, and two 
stalwart hunters fitted on their snow-shoes and 
hurried off on the trail, while it was still to be 
descried, though dimly, along the wind-swept ice 
floor. With blood they could buy that more pre- 
cious liquor, rum. The tracks showed more clearly 
on Great Manitoulin Island, where the red pur- 
suers shortly found them. They skulked along the 
shore while the short day lasted, making better time 
in the bright midwinter moonlight. Presently they 
slackened their eager pace and went forward with 
fresh caution, for they saw, just around a wooded 
point, a glow in the air. The half-perished fugi- 
tives had set fire to some drift-wood and were 
seated on a log facing the flames. So attent and 
unsuspecting were the soldiers, and so loud was the 
crackle of the burning wood, that the approach of 
the murderers was unheard. The Indians were at 
their backs, their tomahawks in hand. In another 
moment the heads of the deserters had been smitten 
from their shoulders. With these ghastly relics 
tied at their belts the Indians regained the barracks, 
delivered the proofs of their industry, and received 
their forty dollars, — a sum sufficient for a long and 
lurid debauch. So suddenly did the axe-blows fall 
that the bodies of the soldiers were not jarred from 
♦their seats, and did not topple, but remained with 
hands extended to the blaze. And there they sit 
on winter nights. Their fire burns blue now in- 
154 



Beyond Our Borders 

stead of red, and shines on uniforms that are mil- 
dewed and faded. When the fisherman or hunter 
puts in at this point, hoping for shelter, he gives 
one glance at the headless soldiers ; then, as fast as 
his legs will carry him or his arms can pull at the 
oars, he leaves the gruesome spot. When he 
passes by daylight no figures are there, — nothing 
but charred branches. 



THE DEVIL'S HEAD 

ON a bluff overhanging an inlet of the Lake 
of the Woods, near Rat Portage, Ontario, 
is a curiously marked and weathered mass of granite, 
the ledge resembling a broad, distorted face with 
staring eyes and savagely grinning mouth. Some 
larkish persons have used paint to increase the 
human suggestion of the thing, and persons of 
weak nerves suddenly coming upon it for the first 
time have been rudely startled and have been com- 
pelled to ask for flasks. Skull Rock and Devil's 
Head they call it, the names being used indiffer- 
ently. It is twenty feet high, and of about the 
same width. The mouth, strangely, is a cave, 
which may be entered for ten feet and leads to a 
deep throat in the stone behind. Nearly every 
miner who enters this region to prospect for metal 
visits this freak and touches his palm to its fore- 
head for luck ; for the first gold-bearing rock dis- 
covered by white men in this region was found in 
155 



Myths and Legends 

the mouth of this great mask. It was said that 
Indians put it there ; but, while the mound-builders 
knew the value of copper, and worked it skilfully 
at the Lake Superior mines before the era of Co- 
lumbus, there is nothing to prove that they valued 
gold until the frauds and ferocity of Europeans 
showed them how much other men could prize 
it. One miner travelled fifteen hundred miles to 
touch this face before he began a search for gold in 
quite another part of the country. The Indians 
are indifferent to this phase of the matter. They 
see in the glaring monster the head of a giant who 
came out of the Northwest to protect them against 
the whites, and they feel a reverence for it which 
they used to prove by burying their bravest men in 
its shadow. Consequently, it is not to them the 
head of a devil, but of a hero. There are many 
traditions of warriors who were to help them repel 
the hated French and English, and until a recent 
date they read comfort in heavenly signs, and looked 
hopefully to every strong man of their own race, 
down to Sitting Bull, to free the land. The comet 
of 1811 they said was the avenging arm of Te- 
cumseh. The expected Messiah, in whose honor 
the exciting ghost-dances have been held from time 
to time, is by some affirmed to be Manibozho. It 
was not Manibozho who left his skull here in the 
wilderness, grinning at the faithful, for he was a 
man of peace and wise counsel. It was possibly a 
visitant from the happy hunting-grounds. Look 

156 



Beyond Our Borders 

west from Calgary to the tumbled Gothic peaks of 
the Rockies, and you see the Indian's " bridge of 
the world" leading to heaven. It was from those 
happy hunting-grounds that the giant rescuer re- 
turned to fight once more, but vainly, for his 
people. 



FATHER JACQUES'S VENGEANCE 

IN one of the forays of red men, so horribly 
frequent in the old days, a family of French 
people on an island on the Otonabee, near Lud- 
gate's Hill, was exterminated, all save a little girl 
of two years, whom the Indians, in adopting, named 
Sajo. The Ojibway raiders were perhaps the more 
cruel in this act because they, too, had suffered 
from an incursion of their foes about that time, 
and among the captives who had been led away from 
their camp by the Hurons was the chief's son. Long 
Snake. Years passed after these acts of evil, and 
wounds had time to heal. If the old chief. Swan, 
sometimes mourned his son, the charm of his white 
captive, who had become to him as a daughter, 
softened his grief, and so in time he came to think 
of Long Snake as dead. A gentler spirit moved the 
Ojibways, for the '^ black-coats" had come among 
them, teaching peace. Father Jacques especially 
had their love and confidence, for he treated them 
as men, not as brutes or children, and proved what 
right-living people the whites could be. Thus, 
157 



I 



Myths and Legends 

on the day when Father Jacques rowed to the island 
of Otonabee, where the massacre had taken pkce, 
but where the tribe now had a village, the people 
promised to give a respectful hearing to his appeal, 
though they had heard it was not to be to their 
liking. He had come to plead for Sajo's liberty, 
for she had been seen by a young white settler who 
loved her and was prepared to oiFer a ransom in 
money, goods, or service. No, they did not wish 
her to leave them. She was their daughter, their 
sister, and when she married it should be as the 
chief directed, to one of their own people. 

The priest made his appeal to chief Swan : 
" You, brother, have known the sorrow that comes 
of severance from those you love. Long Snake 
was stolen from your home in his childhood. How 
if I were to tell you that he lives ? Should not Sajo 
then go free ? How if I were to bring him back 
to you ? How if at this moment he hears my voice, 
is awaiting in that thicket and will do my bidding ? 
Long Snake, come forth. Behold your son, O 
Swan, and you, lad, see your father." The chief 
gazed long at the young man, grown so tall and 
strong, and, slowly approaching him, dropped his 
hands on his shoulders. *' It is he," faltered the 
old man ; then, in a gush of that feeling that inheres 
in every race, savage or civilized, he caught the 
boy in his embrace. The company remained silent 
during this scene. At last an elderly hunter said, 
" He is worthy to be Sajo's husband." The sug- 
158 



Beyond Our Borders 

gestion was caught up in a general acclaim. It 
was a turn in affairs that the priest had not ex- 
pected. 

'^ Stop !" he cried. '* I have done good to you 
and have never asked for reward, but I must do so 
now. I am akin to Sajo, and I demand her as her 
guardian. She is loved by a pale-faced brave, who 
will give you many guns and blankets when you let 
her go. Let her be brought here.'' 

The girl was summoned from a wigwam at the 
edge of the settlement, for women seldom had a 
voice in the councils of the tribe, and she made 
obeisance before the black-robed minister. 

** She is worthy to be my son's wife," exclaimed 
the chief, struck anew by her beauty and grace. 
** Look, my son, this girl is yours. You, Sajo, 
shall be still more my daughter than before ; you 
shall wed my son." 

" Chief Swan ! Chief Swan !" cried the priest, 
*' I beg, I command you not to press this child of 
the white people into a marriage without love. 
She is my relative." 

'* How can the black-coat make his words 
good ?" 

'* Listen to my confession. I thought, when I 
was in France, to have been a soldier rather than a 
priest, and had I so decided I might have come 
among you not as a teacher but as a destroyer. I 
loved my cousin, Josephine Disette, and she loved 
me until she met one Picot, a merchant, my better 
159 



Myths and Legends 

in wealth. Meeting the two walking arm in arm 
one evening, I was so struck by her perfidy that I 
clutched a chain which I had given to her and 
brutally tore it from her neck. An ivory carving 
that hung from it remained in my hand. Picot 
aimed at me with his cane and broke the ornament, 
a smaller piece falling to the ground. I would 
have answered the blow but for the appeal in the 
woman's eye, that brought me to my senses, and I 
hurried away in rage and shame. I went to Paris 
and entered the priesthood, coming to Quebec soon 
after. There I but recently learned that Picot and 
his wife — my cousin — had lost their money and 
had come to this land, too. They settled here. 
The ruin of their home is yonder. They were 
killed by you, for in those days your eyes were 
darkened. Now for my proof. On Sajo's breast 
hangs an image of the Good Son of the Great - 
Spirit. Is it not so ?" I 

'* No. There is an ornament, but it has been 
broken." 

Father Jacques placed his hand on the girl's head. 
*^ Benedicite, daughter," said he, — '^ daughter in 
the church, but cousin in kin. In my youth I 
vowed a vengeance on your father and mother for 
a fancied wrong. I redeem you to the world again 
for your sake, and for the sake of a good man's 
love. That shall be my revenge. See, my peo- 
ple." Drawing from his breast a little bag, he 
took out of it a broken ornament of ivory, and 
1 60 



Beyond Our Borders 

placing it against the fragment worn by Sajo it was 
seen to be complete. It showed the crucifixion 
with the name in gold, "Josephine." '* In the 
name of the Good Son, whose likeness is there, I 
claim my kinswoman." And with no word of pro- 
test, though with sad eyes, the Ojibways saw the 
departure of their daughter. 

THE BONNECHERE AFFAIR 

THE Blackfeet had camped on the upper Ot- 
tawa, near one of the Hudson Bay Company 
posts, in the first half of the present century, and 
among them was Big Moose, famed for his size and 
power. As he had looked love on Little Fawn, and 
she had declared her willingness to be his wife, it is 
surprising that her parents did not give the girl to 
somebody else. Some time before the marriage oc- 
curred. Big Moose entered the camp bearing in his 
arms a fair-haired stranger, a Scotchman in the em- 
ploy of the Hudson Bay Company, who had fallen 
while traversing the wood and wrenched his ankle. 
As the fort was some miles distant, no attempt was 
made for several days to move the injured man, and 
much of the care of him fell to Little Fawn. He 
was a handsome, heartless fellow, who struck up a 
desperate flirtation with his nurse, after the manner 
of his kind, while Big Moose vainly played his 
bone pipe in the twilight before her lodge. The 
Indian was not sorry when the stranger was able to 
II i6i 



Myths and Legends 

go back to his own people, carrying with him — 
though Big Moose did not know it — the heart and 
honor of the girl who was shortly to be his wife. 
The wedding was celebrated with the usual re- 
joicings, and, in spite of White Fawn's thought- 
fulness and silence, the couple were apparently 
happy. 

The supply of food grew short that winter, and 
the more stalwart of the tribe had to bestir them- 
selves to get meat. Big Moose being happy in the 
assurance that when he returned from the long 
hunt a child would greet him. True enough, the 
child was there, but it did not greet him, for it was 
dead — dead on its mother's breast, and she, too, 
was dead. The babe had yellow hair. The Indian 
swore an oath against the white betrayer. 

Five years passed. John Rigby had become a 
prosperous smith in the village that had grown up 
about the second shoot of the Bonnechere, a few 
miles above its meeting with the Ottawa. His 
daughter Jessie v^as his idol, and he had taken a 
pride and pleasure in ministering to her tastes, 
sending as far as to Boston for the books she wished 
to read. Her favorite place of study was an island 
in the stream, near the fall. It was summer, and 
she sat there poring on a favorite volume, obliv- 
ious to all about her. The path to this island was 
across the dry bed of the stream, for the water 
had been dammed above, in order to shoot down 
the logs that made the chief industry of the place 
162 



Beyond Our Borders 

and region. So absorbed was she in her book that 
she did not see the slow rise nor hear the lapping 
of the water as it overflowed its channel near the 
left bank and began to fill the dry space which she 
had crossed an hour before. She was roused by a 
crash. Her escape was cut oiF. Down came the 
logs, and with them the *' river drivers," a swear- 
ing, quarrelling lot, coarsely dressed, smelling of 
liquor, with Dan McDonald in the lead, a fair, 
fearless fellow, a bold fighter, a bit of a thief, and a 
mystery, for it was thought he had once been a gen- 
tleman. A mass of timber came against the upper 
end of the islet with a shock, and the girl shrank 
with a scream. Dan saw her. Jumping, swim- 
ming, scrambling, he gained the patch of ground, 
caught her as a swirl of water swept her from her 
feet, and, bidding her rest her hands on his shoul- 
ders and trust in him, he swam down the stream to 
safety. He took her home, then, and returned to 
work. A trifle like a ducking did not worry him. 
Yet his life changed from that day, for in that 
brief service he had met her look of appeal and 
gratitude, and he loved her. No more gaming, 
drinking, rufiling, and late hours. He confessed 
the sins and follies of his past life and asked her 
help to keep him a better man. He must soon 
leave the village to raft the lumber down to Bytown, 
the Ottawa of a later time, and could not see her 
for some weeks. Would she say good-by to him ? 
Certainly, and would wish him a safe and pros- 
163 



Myths and Legends 

perous journey. Would she — could she — care a 
little bit that he was going away ? Yes, she had 
enjoyed his calls, and would be glad to see him 
again. Then — could she love him ? Whatever 
her answer was, it is certain that within an hour 
they went out for a walk in the moonlight, and in- 
stinctively turned toward the cascade where they 
could see the island on which they had met ; cer- 
tain, too, that they stood there for a long time, 
with clasped hands. As they looked into the 
water, a drunken Indian lurched by and growled a 
curse. It was Big Moose. A vague fear came 
upon them both. 

The next night Dan is on board the raft, drift- 
ing down the dark river, — drifting toward a darker 
river than he sees. He is watching the stars in 
the water and dreaming of happy days to come. 
A dark form steals from behind the little cabin of 
the raft, and in a minute Dan is roused from his 
meditations by a clutch of hands at his throat. He 
succeeds in turning, and strikes wildly at Big Moose, 
whose glaring eyes he can distinguish in the star- 
light, as well as the glint of a knife that the Indian 
is holding in his teeth, awaiting the chance to stab. 
In their struggle both fall into the water. Some 
days go by before Jessie hears that two bodies have 
been found on the Ottawa, a white man's with fair 
hair, and that of an Indian who bit upon a knife 
and clutched the other's throat. 



164 



Beyond Our Borders 

HE WENT BACK FOR HIS GUN 

GITCHE GAUZANI lived on the north 
shore of Lake Superior, not far from the 
place where great Manabozho rests. Before he 
had become an old man he died of an illness, and 
they prepared to bury him, like the others who 
had gone, with his head to the west, since it is in 
that direction that they journey toward the land of 
the sleeping sun and the happy hunting-grounds. 
The usual bows, arrows, blankets, dishes, knives, 
spoon, pipe, meats, fruits, and ornaments were 
brought to put into the grave with him, for these 
things are needed, they believe, in the long march 
to shadow-land. Gitche Gauzani looked so life- 
like that his family refused to allow him to be 
buried, and it was just as well they did so, for in 
four days his soul returned to his body, and he 
awoke. He had come back for his gun. He had 
a fine one, and he wished it to be buried with him, 
but his relatives had taken a liking to it, and had 
insisted that a bow and arrows were good enough 
for a dead man. So he had set off along the broad 
road of the dead. Ah, yes, it was beautiful, but 
he had no gun. There were fields of richest vege- 
tation, many groves, birds without number filled 
the air with song ; he reached the misty valley — 
misty because the river of women's tears ran 
through — that spread around the shining, tranquil 
city of the departed, and there were buffalo, moose, 
165 



Myths and Legends 

deer, antelope, and other game that walked beside 
him, fearless, for he had no gun. Recalling his 
dying request to his friends, he started home to get 
it, and then he met the endless procession of pale, 
tired people travelling toward the city of the dead. 
They were complaining bitterly because they had 
been overloaded with presents that they could not 
use. One burdened man offered a gun to him, but 
the ghost of Gitche Gauzani wanted its own, and 
it struggled on to the place where it had been lib- 
erated from the flesh, in time to stop the burial. 
Great fires seemed to rise around his body to keep 
him back, but he made a desperate leap through 
them, and awoke. He was not entirely glad to be 
on the old earth again, but he improved his chance 
to advise his people. He insisted that in future 
they must give to the dead such things as they had 
been attached to, and not trouble them with mis- 
cellaneous luggage of which the survivors were 
anxious to be rid. 



KWASIND, THE STRONG 

ON the shores near the Sault Sainte Marie 
lived Kwasind, the Strong. His parents 
often blamed him because he did so little to help 
them and engaged so seldom in the sports and 
work of his people. They said he was dull, self- 
ish, and did not respect his elders ; but the reason 
for his reluctance was that he spoiled everything 
i66 



Beyond Our Borders 

he touched, he was so muscular. Once when he 
had been ordered to take in his father's fish-net and 
dry it, he wrung it out, and in doing that he broke 
it into pieces. Then it was seen that he was too 
strong to work, and they let him alone. He 
amused himself, nevertheless, with other kinds of 
labor than that of the camp. He threw fallen 
trees out of the trails and clearings as lightly as if 
they had been weeds. He would pick up rocks 
that Manabozho had thrown at his unrespected 
parent and ^' shy" them into the river as boys cast 
pebbles. He would dive and stay under water for 
an hour, fighting the beaver and helping Manabozho 
to clear the streams, so that they would not over- 
flow in snow-melting time. He did so many things 
of this kind, and bragged so much about them, that 
the fairies, the pukwujinee, feared him and resolved 
to have his life. ^' He will do so much for men 
that nothing will be left for us to do," they said. 
*' He will undermine our power and drive us into 
the river, where our wicked cousins, the neeba- 
nawbaig, will have us/' 

Now, the strength of Kwasind was in his scalp. 
Struck there he was helpless ; only, the right mis- 
sile must be used. He could resist stones and 
arrows, but the soft fall of white pine cones he 
could not endure. This the fairies learned, and 
they perched among the trees, dropping pine-seeds 
as he passed, but missing him, and he, supposing 
that squirrels were at work, paid no heed. The 
167 



Myths and Legends 

only way in which it appeared that he might be 
hurt was in a general attack. So, after storing a 
quantity of the cones at the point of red rocks, 
they awaited his coming, for they knew that on 
warm days it was his custom to float down the 
river on the current, half asleep. Presently he 
came gliding by in his canoe, and the cones rained 
upon him. As he sat up to see what was the 
meaning of the assault, one of the missiles struck 
him fairly on the head, and he fell from his boat 
and sank, never more to rise. Then the fairies 
laughed and capered and were happy once more. 
The hunters used to hear them in their dancing, 
until the white men came and drove away fairies 
and hunters together. 

THE CURSE OF SUCCESS 

NOT only did Hiawatha, or Manabozho, affect 
the shores of Lake Superior, but many 
spirits of good and evil inhabited the woods, and 
the Indians point to the birch-trees that have 
spoken and the rocks on which local gods have sat. 
A great boulder opposite La Pointe bowed to the 
young Otamigan who, believing it could have been 
moved only by his protecting god, never passed 
without laying on it an offering of tobacco. Here, 
in Kitchi Gami, the Big Water, swam Great Otter, 
the first thing to cross the world after this planet 
was made. At the first step in his journey he 
i68 



Beyond Our Borders 

reached ice; at the next, swamp; at the third, 
water ; at the fourth, flowers sprang about his feet. 
But most strong, most dreaded of the lake gods 
was the evil one, the Matchi Manitou, the great 
creature who lived at the bottom of the lake, some- 
times taking a fish's form, sometimes appearing as 
a serpent. None but the wicked besought him, 
for he was full of guile. An instance of his deal- 
ing is found in the tale of the Indian who dreamed 
for eleven successive nights that a voice had com- 
manded him to go to the lake edge, strike the water 
with a magic stick, and repeat certain words to it. 
Then he should find power that would enable him to 
secure health, wealth, and happiness. On the elev- 
enth night he woke his squaw, saying, *^ Listen ! 
Do you not hear drums clashing on the water ?" 

She did not hear any other sound than that of 
the surf lapping on the shingle. 

** The drums are there. They call me," he ex- 
claimed, and hurried from the lodge, while she, 
fearing that his mind was touched, crept after, 
cautiously, and watched him from the shadow. 
He bent over the lake and began a weird chant in 
words she could not understand, keeping time with 
blows of a medicine-stick upon the waves. At 
first the water merely splashed, but after a little it 
began to eddy, circling wider and wider, faster and 
faster, with deepening roar. Fish, frogs, water- 
fowl, and lizards were drawn into the whirlpool 
and were pulled down into its black throat ; the rim 
169 



Myths and Legends 

of the whirl began to ascend the beach ; it lapped 
about the man's feet and rose to his knees ; the 
ceaseless rush of the tide made him dizzy, and he 
could barely hold his footing ; yet still he sang and 
pounded, and demanded that the king of fish ap- 
pear. At last the monster was compelled to obey 
the summons. His huge bulk heaved above the 
surface, and, fixing his baleful eyes on the man, he 
cried, *^ What do you wish with me ?" 

*' Give me the magic power to be rich and well 
and happy." 

** Happy ! You shall be strong, rich, feared, a 
great hunter. What more do you need ? You see 
on my head the charm. Take it. But you shall 
give me one of your children in exchange. It is 
agreed ?" 

The man reached forth his hand and took from 
between the creature's horns a red, flower-like ob- 
ject, that crumbled to dust in his grasp. ** That,'* 
said the Matchi Manitou, *' is power. Make twenty 
little boards, sprinkle the dust on each, give to each 
the name of a benefit you wish, and I will tell an 
opposite harm from which you shall be shielded. 
Whenever you need more power come back and 
summon me again. So long as we are joined in 
our work against all other men I shall hear you 
call and your power shall be renewed. Remem- 
ber, each time I am called I have one of your 
children." 

The great mass sank heavily in the vortex, and 
170 



Beyond Our Borders 

the lake was still. Floating off his little boards, 
the man wrapped up what powder he had left and 
plodded back to his tepee. His wife was dead, 
overcome with horror at what she had seen and 
heard. The curse of success had begun to work. 
For an hour the enchanter grieved, but there was 
little softness in his nature, and he hurried the 
funeral of the woman that he might begin his new 
career unchecked. In a day or two one of his 
children was drowned. The Bad God had taken 
his pay. 

Though obscure till then, the man took on im- 
portance in his tribe. He increased in size and 
strength, and did such killing in war and the hunt 
that they made a chief of him. He read the future 
so clearly that he became the leading prophet. 
His spoils in war and his levies in peace so grew 
that he had to build the largest lodge in the coun- 
try to hold his furs, his arms, his embroidered 
clothing, his wampum, his copper implements and 
ornaments, his store of maize, dried fruit, and meat, 
his carved pipes and tobacco. He had more dogs 
than any other man. He took two new wives. 
He painted his face and dyed his feathers with 
more brilliant colors than his neighbors had ever 
seen. His lodge-covering was gay with pictures. 
With each increase in strength he assumed more 
command, until at last he became a tyrant, obeyed, 
but only through fear, met with dark looks, fol- 
lowed with scowls. When he was absent people 
171 



Myths and Legends 

gathered in knots and whispered. He returned to 
the lake for new strength and new favors, and one 
after another his children disappeared. At the 
last he called to Matchi Manitou in vain, for he 
could offer no more sacrifice. He began to waste, 
fever laid hold on him, the wives he had bought as 
barter fled when they thought it safe to do so, for 
they had never loved him, his wealth began to 
melt under pressure of his needs, his proud spirit 
failed, and the common scorn was no longer whis- 
pered. Deserted, feeble, filled with pains, impo- 
tently raging at his fate, he resolved on one last 
appeal. He went to the lake, beat it with his 
medicine stick, and began his chant. Yes ! he was 
heard ! Again the water began to swirl ; it rose 
about him, it swept him from his feet, it whirled 
him to the vortex, and with one despairing cry he 
was sucked into the depths. 

THE DEATH OF WAHWUN 

AS you ascend the river Mawenetechemon, in 
northern Ontario, you pass the fall *' where 
Big Otter sleeps," the Indian of that name having 
been buried beside it after he had been swept over 
the plunge of water. Next you cross the widen- 
ing called Lake Weendawgoo, where the storm 
spirit lives ; and, lest you rouse his wrath, you must 
go reverently and in silence. Then you come to 
one of those forbidding districts peculiar to the 
172 



Beyond Our Borders 

northern streams, where bare rocks, sand-hills, 
drowned trunks, and black ooze almost surround 
the spread of the dark river. Here is "the place 
of death." In this lonely spot lived Wahwun, a 
powwow, or wizard, who for no reason except to 
wreak his evil nature put spells and troubles on 
the people of his tribe. He was endured because 
he was feared, until he caused a mysterious illness 
to fall upon their chief, when they resolved to suf- 
fer no more of his tyrannies and to punish him for 
those he had inflicted. The avengers chose a 
windy night, when the sound of their footfalls 
would be lost in the strife of the elements, and, 
stealing to his tepee, they rushed in and pinioned 
him before he could reach his medicine-bag to 
*' spell" them. The medicine-bag was destroyed, 
and he was tied to a pile of fagots that were set 
on fire. As the flames crackled around him he 
scowled and hissed at them, snake-like, and cried, 
** May the evil spirit curse you ! May your hearts 
faint in battle ! May your scalps hang in your 
enemy's lodge ! May the evil wind come out of 
this marsh and blight your corn and frighten ofi^ 
your game and kill your children !" More he could 
not say, but with a roar of hate gave up his spirit, 
which was presently seen as a black cloud hovering 
over the lake. For years the people suffered under 
his curse, and even now the place is avoided in the 
night. 



173 



Myths and Legends 

THE DEVIL'S HALF-ACRE 

NORTHEAST from the reservation given to 
Chief Brant for his services to the English 
troops, and for some time known as Wellington 
Square, was a clearing of no large area, with a log 
cabin on it that had been built and occupied by a 
man and a woman, both of gentle manner, well 
appearing, and quite alone. Few people ventured 
into that region eighty years ago, except the trap- 
pers, although a trail led near the clearing from the 
head of Lake Ontario to an inland trading-post. 
On a June day the woman sat sewing in the door, 
but every now and then she dropped her work, as 
if to listen. She was of French type, dark, with 
a rich, out-door complexion, soft eyes, and a win- 
ning smile, for as she looked down the path she did 
smile, in expectancy. At some distance could be 
heard the crack of rifles : the Indian hunters were 
about ; but to these sounds she paid no heed. She 
sang a gay little French song softly to herself and 
smiled again. Suddenly a crash sounded in the 
thicket, and a hunted doe fled by like an arrow. At 
the same moment a loud report came from among 
the trees. The deer sped on. The woman half 
arose, toppled, fell forward on the step, and a stain 
of red trickled away toward the earth. Hurried 
steps sounded among the shrubbery, following the 
direction taken by the doe, and the sun moved toward 
its setting : very slowly it went down that day. 
174 



Beyond Our Borders 

In the twilight a man's voice called across the 
field, *' Lois !" then, in a higher key, *' Lois !" 
There was no answer. The man advanced eagerly. 
For an instant he stopped. He had seen the shape 
on the step, and a shudder went through him. His 
gun dropped from his hand, his game-bag slipped 
from his shoulder. With a toss of his head he 
flung off the spell of a fear that was closing upon 
him and ran to Lois, so still, so cold, with face 
down upon her arm as if she had fallen into a 
tired sleep. *' Lois !" he cried, ** what is it ? You 
are hurt ! Ah, my love, ma cheriCy open your 
eyes. See, it is Paul come to you. Will you not 
speak to me ?" He begged, he wept, he embraced 
her yielding form. At last, a little sigh. With 
almost a laugh of joy he caught her up, ran into 
the house with her, and placed her on the bed. He 
bathed her face, he warmed her with fur wraps, he 
tried to force hot drink into her mouth, but with- 
out avail : a slow, slight breathing was all that be- 
tokened life. 

Just at dawn she awoke and gazed into his face. 
He, who had tried to look comfort into the eyes of 
others in like case, knew the meaning of that gaze, 
and his head fell forward upon her hand, while 
he was shaken with sobs. *^ It is the punishment, 
Paul," she said. *^ We have sinned, almost beyond 
forgiveness, — you against the Church, breaking 
your priestly vow, I against my husband. Pray — 

pray for me — and for you " 

175 



Myths and Legends 

And Paul Daudet, runaway priest, prayed as he 
had not prayed since he had striven against temp- 
tation. As the sun came up he closed the eyes of 
Lois and went out. It was a diiFerent world from 
yesterday's. His Eden was become a hell. A 
grave would soon hold all his happiness, but he 
would not go away. He, who had deceived the 
most trusting, generous patron of his Church, how 
could he go back? Unaided he made the coffin 
and dug the grave, and at its edge he said the funeral 
service. The time was dull and the world was 
cold after that, yet he lived on, alone, growing old 
fast, so rude, so gruff, that the Indians feared him. 
How he subsisted, when, where, and how he died, 
none can say, but in time he disappeared, and they 
called his little garden '* the Devil's half-acre." 

MEDICINE HAT 

ON the south fork of the Saskatchewan, where 
the prairies begin to feel the effect of the 
upward pitch of the distant mountains and to rise 
into the long slant that we call the plains, stands 
the promising town of Medicine Hat. It is a 
name with a character of its own, and already the 
people who prefer such begin to , shudder at the 
ondrawing of the vandal who will demand its abo- 
lition, and by dint of some service in parliament, 
or church, or the local grocery business, will secure 
a change in his own behalf. Then the unhappy 
176 



i 



Beyond Our Borders 

place will become a Smithburg, a Jonesville, a 
Browntown, or some other exasperating inanity, 
like a hundred thousand other inanities between 
Hudson Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Such a change 
will be all the more a pity, because the present 
name throws a light on the ways and thoughts of 
primitive people. Know, then, that medicine 
means more to an Indian than to us. We think 
of it as something diabolical that is good for us, — 
queer anomaly ! — but the Indian distinguishes as 
*^ good medicine" and " bad medicine" anything 
that he fancies will change his fortunes for better 
or worse. Imagine that Lo is hunting antelope 
and meeting no success. Presently he finds the 
top of a tomato-can, and shortly after he gets a 
crack at his game. Can he doubt that the piece 
of tin gave the luck ? Not he. In this he is as 
reasonable as many of his white brothers. He 
wears that fragment of tomato-can about his neck 
with his other jewelry, and it is '* good medicine." 
Well, several years ago there was a Blackfoot 
chief who lived here off and on, hunting sometimes 
and making war on the Crees betweentimes. He 
had much joy and profit in a head-dress of feath- 
ers, that he called his medicine hat, for when he 
wore it he had good fortune — if he had luck. Ah, 
'twas a dark, dark day when he met the Crees near 
the site of this town. He fell upon them with great 
industry, smiting, slaying, scalping, fairly beaming 
with satisfaction ; but just as the enemy was in 

12 177 



Myths and Legends 

flight a gust of wind whirled out of the west, 
caught the magic hat, and tossed it into the Sas- 
katchewan. Instant was the effect : the poor chief 
lost all confidence in himself and his cause, and 
with victory in his reach he forbore to grasp it, 
'^ skedaddling" over the plains in a panic, fol- 
lowed by his tribe. And thus befell the evil that 
leaves its record in Medicine Hat. Do you, reader, 
ever wear a medicine hat ? 



GHOST WOMAN AT THE BLOOD CAMP 

CHIEF HEAVY COLLAR, of the Blood 
tribe, left his camp, on the site of Fort 
McLeod, with a war-party, to exterminate a few 
acquaintances in the Cypress Hills, but, finding that 
his departure had been reported to the enemy, 
there was nothing for it but to jog home again. 
On the South Saskatchewan, above Seven Persons 
Creek, he left his party to kill a buffalo, and while 
roasting a slice of the meat he thought, ^* If one 
of the young men were with me I would send him 
back to that hill for some hair from the buffalo's 
head, so I could clean my gun with it." In a 
minute a shag of this hair blew toward him and 
fell at his feet. Tramping up the stream to St. 
Mary's River, he crawled into a bunch of rye 
grass to sleep. But all night he was conscious of 
faint, strange noises, and he was troubled. At 
dawn he found that he was lying beside a skeleton : 
178 



i 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

a Blackfoot woman had been killed there in the 
preceding summer. Next day he went as far as 
Belly River, where at nightfall he made a fire in the 
shelter of a tree that had come down in a freshet. 
The skeleton had been following him, for now 
he saw it, seated astride a branch, whistling and 
swinging its legs in time to the tune. Four times 
he prayed the thing to leave him, but it only 
whistled the more, looking up at the stars in a 
complacent manner, until anger got the better of 
fear, when Heavy Collar fired at the skeleton, and 
it fell backward, screaming, " You have killed me 
again ! Dog ! there is no place on earth where 
you can hide from me." All that night the chief 
ran from the skeleton, its angry words dying in the 
distance, then approaching and lending the fresh 
energy of fright to his jaded frame. At daylight 
his companions saw from the Belly River buttes 
the two figures approaching, and, descending to 
meet their chief, they began to chaff him for bring- 
ing back a stranger wife. Yet as they looked 
about they discovered no woman, and only the 
footprints of Heavy Collar could be seen along the 
ground. Then he knew that his senses had not 
deceived him, and that he was haunted. 

On regaining the camp a feast of welcome was 
set in nearly every lodge, and, leaving his own 
tent, to eat with a neighbor. Heavy Collar saw a 
bear walk out of the brush, as if attracted by the 
odor of food, and he threw a bone at it to drive it 
179 



Myths and Legends 

away. " You killed me once, and again you are 
killing me," cried the creature ; for it was the 
ghost woman in that guise. He shouted, *' A ghost 
bear is upon us !" whereon all the people in the 
camp crowded into his tepee and listened as the 
ghost tramped about, grumbling, outside. First 
she turned the wing, or flap, at the top of the 
lodge, so that the wind would blow the smoke of 
Heavy Collar's fire back into the tent and strangle 
the people. They, hearing her threats to kill them, 
began to pray to her. After a time the chief's 
mother lighted a pipe and offered it in propitiation, 
and as the ghost backed away the woman followed, 
still extending the pipe. Heavy Collar ran out and 
seized his mother about the waist, but she was 
drawn on as by an invincible power. Another 
man caught him, and he in turn was held by 
another, until the whole village was on the march. 
Suddenly the pipe fell from the old woman's hands. 
She was dead. The ghost was satisfied with one 
life, and melted out of sight, never to be seen 
again. 

THE BLACKFOOT EDEN 

NAPI, Old Man, first to be born from nature's 
creative forces, built the mountains, levelled 
the prairies, caused trees to grow, made the Teton 
River, rested on a hill above it, leaving there the 
outline of his form, then walked northward, build- 
ing the Sweet Grass Hills with rocks that he car- 
1 80 



Beyond Our Borders 

ried. Now he covered the earth with grass and 
fruits, constructed some animals, '* little brothers" 
he called them, and made of clay a woman and her 
son. In four days this clay was able to walk and 
speak, and the woman, having seen that the brutes 
were mortal, asked of her creator if she and her 
companion would always live. Said Old Man, ** I 
had not thought of that. If this buffalo-chip floats 
on the river, people will rise again four days after 
they die. If it sinks, there is an end to them." 
The dung floated. But the woman was dissatisfied. 
** Let it be as this stone decides," she said. **If it 
floats we will live forever." The stone sank, and 
the son died. So, because of a foolish woman, all 
must die. But she had other children, very poor, 
very ignorant, save for what Old Man gave and 
taught them. They had no weapons until, moved 
by pity at the sight of several men gored to death 
by buffalo. Old Man invented the bow and arrow, 
and taught them to make fire by rubbing sticks, and 
to make utensils of stone. 

At the north end of the Porcupine Mountains he 
stopped to make another tribe of men, which he 
did by designing mud images, blowing on them, 
and commanding them to be people. The animals 
were following in his track wherever he went, for 
they understood him, talked with him, and served 
him willingly, but the new people ate them, and in 
order still better to appease their hunger he made 
buffalo enough to occupy the northern plains, for 
i8i 



Myths and Legends 

this original Eden was, roughly, the country ex- 
tending east of the Rocky Mountains for a hundred 
miles or so, and between the Yellowstone and 
the North Saskatchewan. Still moving northward. 
Old Man paused at the meeting of Bow and Elbow 
Rivers to create another family and teach and pro- 
vide for it. At Red Deer River he stretched him- 
self on the earth for another sleep, and there you 
may see the imprint of his form. On waking he 
moved still farther from the warm lands, where 
people grow lazy and timid, and climbed to the 
summit of a tall hill. It was steep, and he amused 
himself by sliding to the foot, the place being 
known to this day as Old Man's Sliding Ground. 
In after-times he set aside this Eden for the Black- 
feet, Bloods, Piegans, Gros Ventres, and Sarcees, 
warning them, when others came, to fight them 
back. They did so until white men entered the 
region with friendly protestations, and now the 
Indians have no land, no game, no place in the 
world. Had they obeyed Old Man it would have 
been different. But Old Man has not died, and 
never will die. He has removed to the mountains 
in the west, beyond the vexing sight of smelters and 
locomotives, and when he is sorely wanted by his 
people he may come back. 



182 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE WICKED WIFE 

WHEN Fort Edmonton, on the North Sas- 
katchewan, was built by the Hudson Bay 
Company, a number of Snake Indians were found 
living among the Piegans of the district, and The 
Egg, one of the Snake squaws, married a white 
employee of the company. The presence of these 
Snakes so far from their old home fell about in 
this way. A Piegan, who was good, brave, and 
rich in ponies, had but one wife, whom he loved 
so much that he cared nothing for other women. 
While picking berries at a distance from their 
camp they were surprised by a war-party of Snakes, 
and knowing that he would be killed if captured, 
while his wife would be spared because of her 
beauty, he left her — since it was impossible for 
both to escape — and galloped back to his people. 
With six of her relatives he undertook her rescue, 
and followed the warm trail of the marauders for 
several days. When at last they came to the Mis- 
souri the man swam across it in the darkness and 
waited in a hollow to see the women when they 
should come to draw water. Among the first was 
his wife. He sprang from his hiding-place, kissed 
her, and in a hurried whisper said, *' Come, swim 
the river with me. Five of your relatives and your 
brother wait for us in that wood." She hung back, 
saying that she wanted to get the pretty things that 
had been given to her, and to steal a horse ; and on 
183 



Myths and Legends 

a promise that she would do this, the husband re- 
crossed the river. 

She was a faithless creature. She had already 
learned to love her captors, and she betrayed the 
little band of rescuers into their hands. Her hus- 
band, who alone was taken alive, the others being 
scalped, was, at her instigation, tortured by fire 
and boiling water, and bound to a tree with black- 
ened face, that he might be given to the Sun. 
When camp was broken, an old woman who had 
lingered behind, out of pity for him, cut his bonds, 
gave him food, and promised that she would mark 
the trail followed by the wife. Then he went 
back to the north. Great were the anger and grief 
when he bore the news of death, defeat, and du- 
plicity to his people, and quick was their revenge. 
The trail had been marked so well by twigs that they 
were soon in sight of the Snake camp, and, stealing 
into the lodge of the kind old woman, the husband 
clapped his hand on her mouth, that she might not 
scream, and kissed her. So soon as she had been 
quieted, she told him that his wife was not only with 
the Snakes, but had become chief among them, as 
she was believed to be " a great medicine." Having 
bidden the beldam to draw aside her friends and 
relatives, and charging her to say that she had 
been told in a dream to do so, the Piegans fell upon 
the camp with a whoop, and killed nearly all that 
were in it. The wife was decorated with the scalp 
of her Snake lover, and made to dance on burning 
184 



Beyond Our Borders 

brush until sh« fell and died. Then the old woman 
and her friends were summoned from their retreat, 
and as a reward for what she had done they re- 
ceived half of all the horses and plunder in the 
village. On the next day the Piegans started back 
to Canada, and as they had won the hearts of this 
company of Snake survivors, the latter followed 
them, married among them, and became as Piegans. 

FOURTH OF JULY AT YALE 

IN the early days at Yale, on the Fraser, the 
place was peopled by a rough crowd of six 
hundred Yankees, who had been drawn into the 
region by the discovery of gold on American Bar. 
The ** foreigners" in this company were few, and 
the Americans managed the town affairs in their 
own way. On the Fourth of July after their 
arrival they decided to celebrate the independence 
of the United States. They were on British terri- 
tory, but what odds ? Nobody was there to object. 
Oh, but stop ; there was one objector, a cockney, 
known as ** Bloody" Edwards, who freely flung 
away his h's and did not mix pleasantly with his 
neighbors. Having imbibed strong waters and 
fired salutes until their patriotism was at a high 
pitch, the miners decided to call on Edwards and 
** initiate" him. That worthy saw the crowd ap- 
proaching with fife, drum, and colors, and he stood 
at the door of his shack, waving a small British 
185 



Myths and Legends 

flag and roaring for Hold Hingland and the queen. 
The flag was like the proverbial red rag shaken 
before a bull, except that it was John Bull who was 
shaking it. 

*' Naturalize him," cried one. 

** Swear him in. Make him take the oath," 
shouted another. 

They proposed the oath of allegiance to the 
United States. Edwards- refused it with profane 
and contemptuous remarks about the republic, and 
another " bloody hooray" for the queen. 

" Duck him in the Fraser," commanded the 
Irishman in the party, 

** Yes, baptize him as an American citizen." 

The Briton remaining obdurate, he was hustled 
to the river and cast in with a mighty splash. He 
cheered for England as he arose to the surface and 
struck out for shore. The crowd laughed, and, con- 
sidering the incident closed, prepared to return, 
but the Irishman had a century of inherited hate to 
satisfy, and, bending over the bank as Edwards had 
almost touched it, he thrust him back into the cold, 
muddy water, shrieking, ** Drown him, dom him ! 
Drown the son of a gun !" 

Emerging a second time from the swift current, 
the Briton cheered again, but weakly, and swam 
more slowly. The Irishman again stood ready to 
force him under water. 

^' The darned fool don't know enough to give 
in," commented one of the bystanders. 
i86 



Beyond Our Borders 

" It isn't fool ; it's grit," answered another. 

" Drown him ! Kill him !" howled the Celt. 

A tall Yankee advanced to the bank, thrust his 
elbow into the Irishman's stomach, with some 
advice to get away, and, lending his hand to the 
tired swimmer, pulled him out. Nearly all fol- 
lowed him to the nearest cabin, a little concerned 
when they saw how weak and chilled he was. 
After being stripped, rubbed, clothed in dry rai- 
ment, and entreated in a friendly manner, a bumper 
of spiced rum was poured out for him, in which 
he was at liberty to drink anybody's health. He 
drank it for his own. The little red flag they in- 
duced him to give up, that they might raise it with 
the stars and stripes. As the flags of the two nations 
lay spread on the shingle, where they were to be 
tied together, one of those blasts of wind that so 
often belch through the canons caught them, twisted 
them into one, and sent them high into the air, 
soaring like an eagle, a spot against the snow- 
fields. Said one old miner, solemnly, "God has 
joined them two flags together." 

And millions say to that, *' Amen !" 

DEATH OF THE GREAT BEAVER 

NORTHEAST of Fort Reliance, at the upper 
extension of Great Slave Lake, are two 
mounds known as Beaver's Lodge and Muskrat's 
Lodge. These, the Indians say, were inhabited 
187 



Myths and Legends 

by huge animals that have no likeness on earth 
in our time. The beaver, who v^as as large as an 
ox, had done such harm among the villages, with 
occasional help in mischief from his friend the 
Rat, that the red people swore to endure it no 
longer ; so, giving over all other business, they set 
ofF in a resolve to do him to death. He was 
hiding in his mound when they came upon him, 
and they sent a volley of arrows through a rift in 
the rock that pricked him in a hundred places. 
This frightened him badly. He went down into 
the river by a hole in the earth that had an open- 
ing under its waters. Crossing without coming to 
the surface, he took refuge in the home of his old 
partner the Rat, who, seeing his plight, refused 
the shelter of his lodge, for he was willing to keep 
out of conflicts with the destructive creatures that 
occupied the skin houses on the shore. In wrath 
at this reception the Beaver pulled his recalcitrant 
friend into the water and belabored him so soundly 
that the Indians saw the disturbance and hastily 
rowed to the scene of it. The Beaver dived under 
their fleet and reached the lake without drawing 
breath, but his hunters kept sight of him in the 
clear water, and as he emerged they filled his hide 
with darts and spears, and a running attack was kept 
up all the way through the narrows until he was 
killed. When the Indians returned, the Aheldezza, 
which had been a gentle stream, had become a 
fierce torrent, broken by falls and rapids impossible 
1 88 



Beyond Our Borders 

to ascend except by portages, and they had no 
sooner reached the Beaver's house than they were 
swallowed by a whirlpool. This account is thought 
by one explorer to figure the history of a great 
natural convulsion, such as the breaking down of 
the hill dam that formerly kept Great Slave Lake 
at a level with Lakes Artillery, Aylmer, and Clin- 
ton-Golden. 



WHY THE MOUNTAINS WERE MADE 

WISUKATCAK, in the Cree myths, is a 
demi-god, like Old Man of the Black- 
feet. He lived on the plains with his father and 
mother, who often quarrelled, and he had a little 
brother. In one of the domestic wrangles the father 
went wild with temper and cut oiF the mother's 
head. Filled with apprehension rather than with 
grief, the murderer said to Wisukatcak, *^ Take 
your brother with you, and go away as fast as you 
can. If your mother's head follows you, keep it 
off, for it will try to harm you. Here is a flint, 
here a fire steel, and here an awl. If you see the 
head, throw first the flint, then the steel, then the 
awl, and repeat this word," And he revealed to 
him a magic word of great power. 

The children trudged away toward the west. 

Soon they heard a rustling in the sage, and saw 

their mother's head rolling swiftly over the ground, 

and as it came near they could hear it calling to her 

189 



Myths and Legends 

children. The elder boy repeated the magic word 
and threw the flint behind him. '* Let a wall of 
rock rise up across the earth," he cried. And in- 
stantly the earth heaved and vast mountains swelled 
from the plain to the sky, with the children on the 
western slope. These were the Rocky Mountains. 
It was a long time before the head could scale this 
range, but it did so at last, and went rolling toward 
the sunset as an antelope would gallop. The boys 
saw their danger again, and the elder, repeating the 
magic word, threw the steel behind him, and com- 
manded, " Let a fire rise up and stretch across the 
earth." And with appalling reports the craters of 
Shasta, Tacoma, Hood, Baker, and the rest opened 
along the coast, and shot their ashes and lava to the 
zenith. This checked the progress of the head for 
an hour, and it was scorched and blistered, but it kept 
on presently, through the showers and streams of 
molten rock, so that it was soon at the heels of the 
boys again, calling as before. Wisukatcak threw 
the awl behind him, repeating the magic word, and 
ordered that a hedge of thorns should spring up to 
reach across the earth. It did so, and has since 
spread, so that we have the cactus with us at this day. 
Even this barrier the head broke through, and went 
rolling after the children. Arrived now at a large 
river, probably the Columbia, they saw a pelican 
in the water, and Wisukatcak hailed him, *' Grand- 
father, take us to the other side, for our mother is 
chasing us to kill us." The pelican took them 
190 



Beyond Our Borders 

over. Then came the head, demanding the same 
service. '* I am going after my children," it said. 
*^ Carry me over, too, and you shall have me for a 
v^ife." The pelican did not exhibit any enthu- 
siasm over this proposition, but after some urging 
he stooped at the shore and allov^ed the head to 
roll upon his shoulders, and, w^ith a caution to it 
to remain still, he arose, slov^^ly, to a great height. 
When poised over the middle of the river, where 
some sharp roclcs jutted above the surface, he threw 
off his burden with a sudden lurch, and the head, 
falling on the rocks, was smashed into pieces. The 
brains are the masses of foam that float on the sur- 
face of the water in times of freshet. 

THE PLACE OF DEAD MEN 

ON a small affluent of the upper Assiniboin 
is a pleasant plain with an unpleasant 
memory, — the place of the two dead men. Here 
a quarrel occurred between two brothers that ended 
in a tragedy, one of them drawing a knife and slay- 
ing the other. Fratricide was held in such abhor- 
rence by their tribe that with one accord the 
spectators fell upon the murderer and killed him, 
burying him beside his victim. From that time 
no Indian camped upon the place, for the dead men 
kept their peppery tempers and would greatly dis- 
turb the traveller who stopped near their graves. 
The lad John Tanner, who was stolen from his 
191 



Myths and Legends 

home on the Kentucky River in the early part of 
this century and taken to Canada, adopted the In- 
dian mode of life, took an Indian wife, arid became 
a hunter. While camped near this haunted spot 
he heard its story, and resolved to show a better 
courage than the braves, by spending a night there. 
He pushed his canoe to the shore, ate his supper, 
and rolled himself in his bujffalo-skin to sleep ; 
but soon two dead men walked out of the dark- 
ness and squatted by his fire. They spoke no 
word, they did not move ; they looked steadily at 
him out of their round, fishy eyes until he could 
endure it no longer and sat up; whereupon the 
watchers vanished. Presently he fell asleep, and 
the dead ones returned in his dreams, but now they 
not only stared, they gibed at him and poked him 
with sticks. He tried to resist, to rise, to cry out, 
but in vain. One of them told him after a time 
that he would see a horse fettered at the top of a 
low hill that stood near, adding, '* There, my 
brother, is a horse which I give you to ride to- 
morrow. And as you pass here on your way 
home you can call and leave the horse and spend 
another night with us." 

The day, which had never before seemed so long 
in coming, broke at last, and the dead ones were 
seen no more. Tanner arose as soon as it was light 
enough to go on, drew his canoe among the bushes, 
in perfect confidence that the promise was to be 
kept, ascended the little hill, and found the horse, 
192 



Beyond Our Borders 

which he mounted and rode to a trading-station not 
many miles away. But he never could prevail on 
himself to return to the place of the two dead 
men, and his people had a worse fear of it than 
ever. 



HOW THE INDIANS BECAME RED 

THE Okanagans — who once figured in an un- 
official publication as the O'Kanaghans — 
believe in Skyappe and Chacha, the good and bad 
spirits who are constantly moving through the air, 
watching all men, and they also tell of a heroine, 
one Scomalt, who was great and strong and ruled 
the island where the first men lived. This was 
long, long ago, when the sun was so young that it 
was only as large as a star, and there was very little 
earth to live on. This island was far in the east, 
and was settled by white giants. War arose among 
them, and the noise and slaughter so exasperated 
Scomalt, their queen, that she drove the rebels to 
the end of the island, broke it off, and pushed it 
out to sea. This fragment, with its inhabitants, 
now too busy worrying to fight, drifted for many 
days, and was so swept by storm and so lacking in 
food that one by one the people died, all but a 
man and his wife, who deserted the derelict, for it 
was water-logged and sinking, and paddled day and 
night in their canoe until they came to America, — 
then an island fringed with rocks, — and landed on 
i^ 193 



Myths and Legends 

what is now the territory of the Okanagans. From 
them came all the people of the western world. 
But, alas ! they were no longer white. After their 
days of exposure to the sun they had been burned 
red from head to foot. Here the descendants of 
this pair shall dwell until the lakes and ever-flowing 
rivers deep beneath us shall melt the foundations 
of the world and it will float away again, that time 
to ruin. 



THE POOL OF DESTRUCTION 

SOMEWHERE off the coast, probably off 
Vancouver, was the Charekwin, a vast whirl- 
pool where meeting ocean currents tossed and cir- 
cled, and in the centre of the flood the waters were 
sucked down with hideous roaring and lamentation. 
Hardly less fearful were the cries of those who 
were committed to the deep, for the vortex was 
the mouth of hell, and those who had lived in evil 
met their end in water burial, so dreaded that the 
coast Indians would readily die any other death 
than that by drowning. On the coast of Cali- 
fornia lived the Hogates, long ago. There were 
only seven of them, and they dwelt in houses, like 
white men, for they were strange to the red people, 
who say that they came from another land in a 
boat. Large and strong were these immigrants, 
with fierce appetites, as the kjokken-modding, or 
** kitchen-midden," attests, which they left on the 
194 



Beyond Our Borders 

height of Point St. George, near Crescent City, 
There are shells of mussels and bones of elk, seals, 
and sea-lions by the ton. In killing the ocean 
creatures they used a harpoon fastened to their 
boats by a long line, and once, having thrown this 
weapon into an unusually large sea-lion, the value 
of their prize decided them to take a risk rather 
than cut the raw-hide rope, when the monster set 
oiF with the speed of a tidal wave toward the 
northwest. But if they had thought to tire him 
they were mistaken. Hour after hour they rushed 
over the sea, beyond sight and comfort of the 
land, and soon the roaring of Charekwin sounded 
across the waves. Too terrified to attempt an 
escape, or knowing the hopelessness of such an 
attempt, the men awaited their end in silence. 
Now they could see spirits tossing on the wind that 
rages above the caldron. Their time on earth was 
limited to minutes. But the Father of Life had had 
little reason to reproach them, and he would not 
abandon them in this extremity. As they reached 
the in-fall of the waters the rope broke : the sea-lion 
was drawn under, struggling mightily, but the boat 
arose softly into the air, circling as it had circled 
about the mouth of hell, ever rising ; and so the 
seven Hogates reached heaven and became the 
seven stars, — the Pleiades. 



195 



Myths and Legends 

YEHL, THE LIGHT-MAKER 

ATHLINKEET living in sight of the great 
Alaskan peaks had for a wife a woman so 
bright and fair that he was exceeding jealous, 
though it was all so dark on earth that he could 
barely see except by fire, or by the beauty of the 
woman herself, for the heavenly lights had not been 
set, and in the gray the few other beings groped 
sadly, trying to find sound earth to live on. This 
wife was so faithful that she could not so much as 
suppose a cause for jealousy, and she made the 
state of her husband worse by beaming pleasantly 
on all strangers and holding them in cheerful, in- 
nocent talk. He kept a flock of red birds hover- 
ing near his lodge, that they might report to him 
what she did and said and who conversed with 
her ; and her willingness to be with others angered 
him so that he made a box, at last, and hid her in 
it. Because his sister's children had merely looked 
at her, while this rage was on him, he had slain 
them every one. The bereaved mother walking 
on the shore excited the compassion of the fish, 
who put their heads out of the water to ask what 
ailed her, and the whale, the counsellor of his tribe, 
bade her swallow a certain pebble on the beach 
and drink some sea-water, for she should then bear 
Yehl, a son nobler than those she had lost. She 
obeyed, and the prophecy came true. In a place 
removed from her wrathful brother she brought up 
196 



Beyond Our Borders 

her boy to diiFer as much from him as he could. 
He was to do good to men, and to relieve the cold 
and dark by setting fires in the sky. He grew up 
resolved in this course, and when he gained his age 
and strength he went to BaranofF Island, where the 
wicked man lived, and after biding his time until 
that ferocious relative was absent, he crept into his 
lodge, dragged out the box in which the beautiful 
woman was caged, and was about to open it, when 
the Thlinkeet returned, and, catching him at his 
merciful business, rushed at him with spear and 
club. 

Yehl struck up the weapons, and after a struggle 
escaped, and some time went by ere he came out 
of his hiding in the shrubbery to attempt again 
the liberation of the fair victim. Possibly the 
Thlinkeet believed that his enemy had been mor- 
tally hurt in the fight, for he relaxed his guard, 
and Yehl surprised him in a deep sleep. First 
he opened the box that held the stars and moon, 
and they floated lightly up to their places in the 
sky. Then he opened the box that had been the 
living tomb of the innocent wife, and with a look 
of rapture she, too, sped into the skies. Amaze- 
ment sat on every face, for she was light itself; 
and now, for the first time, the beauty of the world 
disclosed itself in her smile. Her husband, waking, 
saw the empty boxes, the shine in the sky, the 
triumphant Yehl beside him, and with a roar of 
anger he rushed away to the mountains. The 
197 



Myths and Legends 

people, who had been used to groping by the light 
of comets, were so terrified at the fire of the newly 
risen sun that they rushed into the sea, — some 
of them, — and in mercy Yehl changed them into 
fishes, that they need not drown ; others, leaping 
into the air, out of their wits, he turned to brightly 
colored birds ; while those that ran to hide in the 
woods became deer. The rest fell prostrate, hail- 
ing him as deliverer, light-creator, and while he 
stayed on earth they worshipped him, 

THE SHELTER OF EDGECUMBE 

AN Indian and his wife quarrelled, not un- 
usually, and their fights ended in victory 
for the stronger, namely, the man. In fear of his 
blows, after one of these misunderstandings, the 
woman ran like a deer up Mount Edgecumbe, her 
husband just at her heels all the way to the top ; 
but as they reached that point the spirit of the 
peak, Ahgishanakon, ** the woman who supports 
the earth,'* opened the rock and took the woman 
to her protection. ** Back !" she cried to the pur- 
suer. ** Back to the woods and howl your anger 
there ! Back and prey on meaner creatures, that 
are less worthy of your bragging when you beat 
them. You have aimed blows at the one you 
were bound to shelter, the mother of your chil- 
dren. She shall be forever in my charge, while 
you shall slink and prowl about the earth for a few 
198 



Beyond Our Borders 

years longer in your real character. Wolf you are 
by nature. Now be wolf in fact." And the man 
felt himself shrinking and growing uncertain on 
his feet. He could no longer steady himself. He 
dropped forward on his hands. His fingers were 
growing long, his nails becoming claws, his flesh 
hidden by hair. He tried to cry his protest and 
astonishment, but only a long, hoarse bay came 
from his throat. He was indeed a wolf. Howl- 
ing fiercely, he fled aways and still he haunts the 
wood ; yet when he catches any animal he carries 
it to the mountain-top. The distant rumble of the 
storm is the woman's voice, talking with the 
manitou, and the thunder is the growling of the 
wolf as he gnaws the bones of his prey. The 
manitou of Edgecumbe, Ahgishanakon, saved her- 
self from the universal deluge by catching at this 
peak, and standing on it held up and saved the 
world from drowning, too, while her brother, 
Chethl, struggled so hard to rise out of the water 
that wings appeared on his shoulders and he be- 
came the osprey. 

HOW SELFISHNESS WAS PUNISHED 

BEFORE Sitka was dreamed of there lived on 
its site, one summer, a Thlinkeet, with his 
wife and mother. It was a time of suffering and 
hardship, for the fish stayed off the coast, the game 
had gone far over the mountains, and neither net, 
199 



Myths and Legends 

trap, nor arrow brought a morsel to the lodge. 
The Thlinkeet fished and hunted all day to no 
eiFect, and he could carry home nothing but an 
occasional bark pail of berries, roots, or young 
sprouts, to boil for soup and greens. His mother, 
who was nearly blind, and could not see to pick 
the berries, grew daily more haggard and weak, 
whereas the wife kept fresh and strong. Was it a 
dream that the younger woman was eating every 
night, and was cooking fish in the lodge ? No, the 
mother's senses were still sharp. Waking and as- 
suring herself that it was not a dream, she feebly 
held out her hands, crying for a single morsel. 

** Your mind wanders. You were dreaming. 
There is no food," answered the wife. 

*' But I can smell it. I see the fire. I hear the 
crackle of its skin. Ha ! Now I hear you 
eating." 

** No, I am only chewing gum from the spruce- 
trees. It makes one feel less hungry." 

** I know you are eating fish. Give me some, I 
beg." 

*' Then, since you will intrude yourself, take 
it." And, picking a tail and head out of the scald- 
ing fat, she flung them into the outheld hands and 
shut the withered fingers over them until the old 
woman's palms were badly burned. 

The starving one sobbed herself to sleep. In 
the morning she whispered to her son what had 
happened. He said nothing, greeted his wife as 
200 



Beyond Our Borders 

usuaJ, and resolved to watch. On the next night 
when the time was half-way to morning the young 
woman crept softly from the lodge, followed by her 
husband, whom she supposed to be asleep. He 
saw her cut an alder branch, after making curious 
gestures before it, take it to the shore, and wave it 
over the sea, repeating some words whose meaning 
the listener did not know, but which he imme- 
diately committed to memory. In a moment the 
water rippled with a thousand fins, — a shoal of her- 
ring coming up to be caught. The woman stooped 
and plucked out two or three of the largest, laughing 
quietly as she gathered them in her dress and tip- 
toed back to the lodge. Her husband managed to 
reach it before her, and was lying so still when 
she entered that she never thought of looking to 
see if she were watched. A fire was soon snap- 
ping ; the fish were broiling on the coals and send- 
ing forth a maddening odor. The woman ate as 
much as she pleased, threw the rest into the 
shrubbery outside, and went to bed content. Our 
Thlinkeet was lucky on the following afternoon in 
catching a seal that yielded a particularly heavy 
fat, with which the wife was so kindly plied at 
supper that she slept soundly until dawn, her hus- 
band taking her place as fish-catcher at midnight, 
and, by copying her incantation, securing a good 
batch of herring. When the selfish wife awoke 
and saw her husband and his mother making an 
ample breakfast and looking at her significantly, she 

20I 



Myths and Legends 

smiled good-naturedly and made an excuse for 
quitting the lodge. No sooner had she gained 
freedom than with all her speed she ran toward 
the mountains, fearing pursuit and punishment. 
Yes, her husband was following. She climbed a 
great boulder that lay in her path, but as she 
reached the top her dress divided into feathers and 
she shrank to a twentieth of her size. She cried 
in astonishment and alarm, but her voice had be- 
come a hoot. Her husband gained the rock, — her 
husband nevermore : her witchcraft had reached 
its end, and the evil forces she had commanded 
now commanded her. With a heavy flap of wing 
she arose before the face of the Thlinkeet and flew 
off into a wood. She was an owl. 

THE GHOST OF SITKA CASTLE 

WHEN Alaska was a Russian province its 
little capital of Sitka had sometimes the 
aspect of a court. It was a scene of gayeties, war- 
ships anchored in its harbor, officers, soldiers, and 
sailors brightened its few streets and its gloomy 
BaranofF castle with arms and uniforms, and social 
life gained its final charm when the ladies of the 
governor's household received the visiting military 
and naval deputations. In those days Sitka was a 
miniature St. Petersburg in formalities and hospi- 
talities. The great samovar, made in the brass- 
foundry of the town, was always bubbling in the 

202 



Beyond Our Borders 

castle drawing-room, and tea was served to every 
guest by a maid in the picturesque costume of the 
Ukraine. When Alaska passed into the possession 
of the United States the official mansion was gutted 
by relic-seeking vandals, who even pounded the 
hinges from its doors, and it might have been de- 
stroyed altogether had not an American signal- 
officer insisted on setting apart two rooms for his 
own use. He half regretted his choice of a resi- 
dence when the time had come either to disprove or 
to verify certain rumors that had been repeated to 
him before he entered the place, for on that night 
he surely heard the rustle of a dress moving down 
a corridor, and caught the perfume of wild roses. 
All night long somebody — something — was walk- 
ing in that corridor, — some one in distress; and, 
suddenly opening his door, he believed that he saw 
a woman's figure in a wedding-gown, with phos- 
phorescent gems in her rings, -slowly twisting her 
hands together. Just then the moon flashed from 
behind a cloud, and no such thing was there. It 
must have been an effect of shadow, he said to 
himself. At any time he was likely to hear a 
sound of sighing, or of something moving sadly, 
wearily, in the other rooms. Six months after the 
first visitation he heard again the stir of a dress, 
smelt the perfume of roses, saw a dim, faceless 
figure in the hall, and until dawn faint sounds 
moved through the castle. He gave up the attempt 
to account for these things. He had argued that 
203 



Myths and Legends 

the wind was blowing about the ruin, that it 
brought a scent of wild roses from the edge of the 
wood, that rats and mice were capering in the 
walls, that clouds, moonlight, starlight, and the 
aurora had woven fantastic pictures. He could de- 
ceive himself no longer. The place was haunted. 
Then he gave a more believing ear to the story 
that had been told of the castle, — how a niece of 
one of the stern old governors, having been given 
to a man of title, for whom she cared nothing, as 
if she were only merchandise, was found just after 
the wedding, in one of the rooms, dead, in her 
bridal robes and jewels, and wreathed in roses. 
Had she killed herself in despair ? Had her hus- 
band killed her when he learned that she had a 
lover ? Had her lover killed her when he found 
she was not to be his wife ? Had he, as one rumor 
had it, slain her at the altar and drowned himself 
directly afterward ? Her lover was a poor lieu- 
tenant, her husband a prince. No one living has 
solved the mystery. 

A FATAL RIVALRY 

THE transfer of Alaska by Russia to its new 
owner, the United States, was denoted by 
the arrival of a small body of American troops to 
support the official dignity at Sitka. The officers 
were at once absorbed into the coterie that made 
the society of the place, and two of them, a cap- 
204 



Beyond Our Borders 

tain and his first lieutenant, found in the change 
from the fairer districts of the south no reason to 
complain ; for among the residents of the little 
capital was a Russian girl of title, high lineage, 
amiable, dreamy-eyed, and lovely. Where mem- 
bers of the fair sex are few and soldiers many, 
jealousies are sure to occur. The young woman 
apparently liked the lieutenant the better of the 
two ; he was younger, had more polish, and was 
finer-looking than his superior, although the cap- 
tain's courage had been tried on many fields, and 
he made a distinguished figure in his uniform. 
There was little attempt on the part of either to 
conceal the fact that he was falling into a passionate 
love for the young countess, and that the society 
of his rival was growing irksome. Availing him- 
self of his authority, the captain often assigned 
duties to his second in command that were plainly 
invented for the occasion and devised merely to 
keep him at the barracks while the captain was 
prosecuting a siege more difficult than any he had 
before engaged in. Possibly the countess was a 
bit of a flirt, and gave such slight encouragement 
to the elder of her suitors as would insure his 
company. 

The situation was sure to lead to a rupture be- 
tween the two men, and it was known that hot 
words had passed ; hence there was much sur- 
prise at head-quarters when both of them returned 
from a walk, one afternoon, in courteous converse, 
205 



Myths and Legends 

and it was understood that they were going off on 
a hunt together in the morning. They went up 
Indian River, and were not followed. At evening 
the captain returned, alone. He was pale and 
agitated. His companion had been gored by a 
buck deer, he said, and he had been obliged to 
leave the body where it lay. He called on the 
countess to tell her of the accident, and took a cup 
of tea from her hands before he left. On reaching 
head-quarters he found that a search-party had gone 
up the river trail with lanterns to. seek for the 
body, and his commanding officer, intimating in 
pretty plain terms his belief that a duel had been 
fought, advised him to retire to his chambers, 
which he did. Toward the middle of the night 
the soldiers came back, bringing the dead man on a 
stretcher. There was a hole in his chest, but it 
had been made by a bullet, and his own rifle had 
been found close by. The captain's arrest was 
ordered at once. A sergeant and a squad went to 
his rooms and knocked. There was no answer. 
The door was forced. The captain lay propped 
in bed, staring in horror, his jaw fallen, his face 
colorless, his hands clinched in agony. He had 
been dead an hour. In the official reports it was said 
that he had died of heart disease and the lieutenant 
had accidentally shot himself; but the common 
belief was that the Russian woman had put poison 
in his tea, and that in his last moments he believed 
that his victim was standing at his bedside. 
206 



Beyond Our Borders 

BAD BOYS OF NA-AS RIVER 

SOME mischievous boys who lived beside the 
Na-as River of southern Alaska were amusing 
themselves by catching the young salmon in that 
stream. They first lifted them from the water to 
see them flop and wriggle, flashing their bright 
scales in the sunshine ; but, that sport growing too 
tame, they took sharp stones and scratched and cut 
the poor creatures. Finally they made wounds in 
their backs and put pebbles into them, as though 
to find if laden in this manner they would sink 
to the bottom and stay there. They laughed glee- 
fully as the fish twisted about under the water in 
the attempt to get rid of the burden, or floated 
near the surface, gasping and exhausted. All this 
time the Great Spirit was watching them with 
stern displeasure. Like children who are not so 
savage, the youngsters found the sport flagging as 
their victims weakened, and they prodded the un- 
happy fish with sticks, and turned them this way 
and that as they floated seaward. At last the wrath 
of the Great Spectator could no longer be kept in 
bounds. From his seat on a mountain he arose. 
He lifted the cover from the peak, and the bubbling 
lava within flowed down the side and into the bed 
of the Na-as. The fish rushed away to sea, but 
the wicked boys were caught in the flow, their 
feet were burned off, they were suffocated in hot 
ashes, the river itself was turned to steam. After 
207 



Myths and Legends 

bellowing and belching rebukes for a time, a calm 
fell once more ; but it was on a region of bereave- 
ment, and the Indians will at this day show you 
the bones of the bad children in the distorted lava 
forms beside the Na-as. 



THE BAFFLED ICE GOD 

THIRTY or forty miles up the Stickeen River, 
in Alaska, is a glacier twenty-five miles 
long and five miles wide, a stupendous ice mass, 
that is a part of a bridge once flung across the 
river. A god of this region, who had most power 
in winter, closing the smaller streams, covering the 
mountains with white, stripping foliage from the 
trees, and cumbering the inlets with floes, was 
angry at the spirit of the Stickeen for its refusal to 
submit to the power of the frost. As the long 
winter came on, brooding and threatening, the god 
shook his spear of icicle in triumph, and began 
bawling his orders in a north-wind voice that 
roared and echoed from the cliffs and shook all the 
loose snow out of the passing clouds. The Stickeen 
went dancing and frolicking to the ocean, without 
any notice of the god, until, filled with wrath that 
one child of nature should disobey him, he gathered 
from the mountain-side great masses of ice and 
snow and flung them across the stream. He could 
not close it, but he bridged it and shut it from the 
air and sunlight, and the people who had gone to 
208 



Beyond Our Borders 

it daily for fish were frightened, and asked its spirit 
what could be done to make it free again. Crushed 
and shamed, the spirit made no answer, but the god 
cried in his stormiest voice that he must have two 
lives to pay for this disobedience, and must have 
them soon, or he would visit his wrath on all the 
men who dwelt along the river. 

An old chief asked who among the company 
would make the sacrifice, — make it by that most 
dreaded death of drowning. His people shrank 
away, and there fell a silence. But presently a 
young woman arose and in faltering tones announced 
that she would die to save her people. At this a 
young warrior of the tribe sprang up and cried, 
proudly, that he would be the other to make this 
gift of life. A canoe was brought to the shore, 
sadly decked with flowers and carvings for the last 
voyage of the two, and they were bound so that 
they might not attempt an escape when the boat 
was swept against the ice bridge and sucked into 
the deeps below. Tearful farewells were said, and 
the boat was pushed into the stream. As it neared 
the low arch of ice the people turned aside, that 
they might not see the tragedy. But there was no 
tragedy. Pleased and touched by the willingness 
of these innocent ones to give their lives for his 
selfish whim, the god stamped on his new-made 
bridge, and a part of it fell into the water, leaving 
a space through which the boat was carried by the 
river manitou in safety. Then it swung to the 
14 209 



Myths and Legends 

shore and grounded. Loud were the cries of praise 
and quick the release of the willing captives, who 
were led back to their camp in triumph. And the 
god desisted from his battling from that hour. 



2IO 



aco 



WHITE VISITORS BEFORE COLUMBUS 

MEXICO and the adjacent country enjoyed a 
civilization that must have seemed to its 
people something better than the substitute offered 
by the pale-faced strangers who came among them 
carrying tubes of metal that uttered lightnings and 
thunders and slew by hundreds, and who stabbed 
and cursed and tortured and imprisoned when they 
could not have their way, and pillaged whether 
they had it or not. The shameful treatment of 
the owners of the western continent began in the 
day of Columbus, and has continued ever since. 
Long before any permanent settlement of white 
people on our continent, before even the visits of 
the Norsemen, a great, strong, religious race, the 
Mound-Builders, had disappeared, leaving not even 
a name. Whether they had crossed the Atlantic 
or the Pacific, or had sprung from native stock, is 
conjectural. There are Chinese who have built 
mounds, though none on such a scale as those of 
the central States or the great heap of Cholula, and 
none so splendidly adorned as those of Koh. It 
was at about the dawn of the Christian era that 
the Nahuas entered Mexico and built houses, while 
the Toltecs, who followed them, erected temples, 
and these the Aztecs decorated with sculpture. 
213 



Myths and Legends 

The Toltecs said that they came from Atlan, or 
Aztlan, which some believe to have been Atlantis. 
The Mound-Builders may have been earlier than 
all of these, and they have left the records of their 
march, or their retreat, from Manitoba to the do- 
main of Montezuma. As the kingdom of peace had 
not then come upon the earth, it is likely that this 
great family, the Aryans of the v^estern world, the 
people of arts and gentle living, met their end among 
the deserts and snows beyond the Rio Grande. 

But, great as the destruction of the red race may 
have been in its intestine wars, it was not doomed 
until the white men landed. On the island of 
Cozumel, which the Spaniards took in the middle 
of the sixteenth century, it is reported that they 
found a population of one hundred thousand, and 
half as many others from adjacent lands yearly 
visited the shrines of the sun-god. Now but a 
few hundred remain. 

As among the Canadian tribes, so among the 
Mexicans, we have tokens of an early teaching of 
at least the forms of Christianity. The cross ap- 
pears in Aztec sculpture, though not needfully as a 
Christian symbol. The Lower California Pericues 
tell of Kwahayipe, son of the lord of heaven, and 
his wife, who lived in the Acaragui Mountains and 
brought men into being, pulling them out of the 
earth. Men killed him, put a crown of thorns 
upon him, and in a remote place he lies to this 
day, dripping fresh blood and uncorrupted. And 
214 



Beyond Our Borders 

the second coming of a Messiah was so confidently 
looked for that Montezuma believed that the great 
white god had returned when Cortez landed. 
Cortez, forsooth ! This god, or demi-god, was 
Quetzalcoatl, " the plumed serpent," the son of a 
virgin in Tula, he whose symbol was the morning 
star, bringer of light, and who was worshipped in 
Cholula. He came from the east to help the human 
race. He was in many ways like Hayowentha, or 
Hiawatha, albeit a large, bearded man, wearing 
white garments and a mitre, and red crosses were 
painted on his feet. He was a celibate, hated war 
and sacrifice, delighted in fruits and flowers and 
things of natural beauty, and was constantly preach- 
ing and working for purity and peace. When, 
through the wiles of his dark enemy, Tezcatlipoca, 
he was driven away in exile, sailing eastward in 
his snake-skin boat, yet glad to meet the sun, he 
promised to return ; so, when Cortez arrived the 
Mexicans hailed the strangers as brothers of the 
plumed serpent. Heartless was the violation of 
this trust. 

Another indication of early visits of white men 
to this land is found in a legend told among the 
Indians of Colombia, to the effect that Bohica, a 
bearded white man, appeared to the Mozcas on the 
Bogota plains and taught them farming, building, 
draining, and civil government before he retired to 
a hermitage for two thousand years. Like him 
was Manco Capac, who with his sister. Mama 
215 



Myths and Legends 

Oello, gave laws and arts to the Peruvians before 
returning to the Sun, his father; like him v^ere 
Kukulkan of Yucatan, and Bochica of the Mu- 
yscas. 

When the Spaniards invested Bogota they guarded 
the roads, so as to cut off the chance of escape and 
intercept any approach of reinforcements. The 
savage men-at-arms soon had the city in their power, 
the natives having been awed by the thunder and 
murder of their guns into the belief that the 
Spaniards were invincible. The invaders as they 
entered found the people either attempting flight 
or extended along the streets in supplication ; but, 
paying little attention to them, save when it was 
necessary to beat back a threatening band, they 
pressed on toward the centre of the town, from 
which a great smoke was rising, for here they 
knew was the temple, and here they hoped to find 
treasure. The sound of a solemn chant arose 
wdthin, and as they came clattering and shouting to 
the door, the people, in a frenzy at their intended 
sacrilege, made one last and vain attempt to stay 
them. Benalcazar and his men rushed in. Be- 
fore the statue of a grim god a funeral pyre had 
been reared, and the flames were snapping over it. 
Gums and spices had been thrown upon the logs, 
and the smoke was choking in its fragrance. Ves- 
sels of gold had been heaped in a corner, ready to 
carry out or to hide, and the eyes of the Spaniards 
fastened on them greedily ; but as the smoke 
216 



Be^^ond Our Borders 

swung aside the leader saw what made him pause. 
Three white men, not Spaniards, nor like them, 
stepped upon the brands, still chanting, their look 
turned skyward, their hands raised high. Long 
beards flowed upon their breasts, and their rich 
gowns were heavy with gems and gold. Without 
look or word for the intruders, these men of a race 
unknown went calmly to their death. 

THE WHITE GOD 

WHOEVER he was, whatever he was, or 
whatever it was, the white god of Mexico 
made possible the conquest of the Aztecs, Noth- 
ing but a belief that Cortez might be this Messiah 
admitted his little army into the heart of a land 
of haughty, suspicious, if not hostile people who 
outnumbered his force a thousand to one. Much 
is due to the craft and diplomacy of the invader, 
much to his downright courage, much to the awe 
created by his horses and his thundering arms ; but 
these alone did not conquer the subjects of Mon- 
tezuma. The Aztecs were victims of false hopes. 
In the year 1121 Bishop Eric left Iceland for 
America, which Leif the Lucky had found over a 
hundred years before, and never was Eric heard of 
afterward. May it not be that, repelled by the 
desolate aspect of the northern lands, or driven by 
lasting winds, or misled by vague reports as to the 
new continent, or lured along by the increasing 
217 



Myths and Legends 

warmth and fertility as his vessel coasted south- 
ward, Eric reached Mexico, and, finding its people 
tractable and intelligent, began teaching the doc- 
trines in whose earnest promulgation he had found 
his life-work and won his bishopric ? One myth 
sets forth that a white man with a hooded robe and 
long beard, carrying a cross, landed at Tehuantepec, 
on the Pacific side of Mexico, and urged the In- 
dians to perform penance for their sins, make con- 
fession, and take vows of chastity. In another 
version he carries a sickle, condemns all sacrifices 
except of fruit and flowers, teaches arts, including 
gem-cutting and metal-casting, invents letters and 
a calendar, and when there is talk of war puts 
his fingers into his ears. The Christian faith, or 
something like it, was taught to these people long 
before the arrival of the Spaniards, and some of 
their arts may have had their rise in the instructions 
of the Norsemen. For the southern tribes were 
expert in many ways. They had phonogrammic 
writing, as well as pictographs, they knew the 
metals, they made splendid cloaks of feathers, they 
adorned their helmets with precious stones, they 
wove cotton and dyed it gorgeously, quilting it, 
too, for armor. Something like a mail and express 
service was furnished by a corps of royal mes- 
sengers, who carried picture-writings and goods, 
running at top speed along the fair roads, and re- 
lieving each other of messages and burdens at post- 
houses. By this means the emperor kept in touch 
218 



Beyond Our Borders 

with all parts of his kingdom, and enjoyed many- 
luxuries that we are used to think of as modern. 
He ate fish at his dinners that twenty-four hours 
before had been swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. 
Many of the arts and benefits of Aztec civilization 
were the probable inventions of the people, how- 
ever. They did not know the use of steel, which 
Eric would have taught them, but employed ob- 
sidian, or volcanic glass, for their knives, weapons, 
and utensils. It is said by the Indians of the 
Andes that they once had the art of softening gold 
by steeping it in some liquid, so that they were 
able to work it into any desired form, after which 
it would harden ; and, curiously, among the gold 
ornaments found in graves and ruins some bear 
finger-prints. More of the metal was wrought 
with hammers and chisels, and the great golden 
shield, worth two hundred and Mty thousand dol- 
lars, that Montezuma sent to Cortez, — a shield like 
a cart-wheel, — was richly ornamented with carv- 
ings. Precious metals were abundant. The skele- 
ton of an Inca found in Chili in 1854 was wrapped 
in a sheet of gold. Much that might have been 
learned of this strange people is hopelessly lost, 
for nearly all the picture-manuscripts of their 
schools were destroyed by the Spaniards, who be- 
lieved that they were compacts with the devil and 
would work magic. 

Thinking how long a time elapsed between the 
voyages of Eric and Cortez, it appears likely that 
219 



Myths and Legends 

many of the arts and beliefs which may have been 
taught by the former suffered a change, and that 
his personality should have been merged in that of 
Quetzalcoatl, the god of the air, one of the thirteen 
principal gods of the nation. There were over 
two hundred others. In his temple at Cholula 
were two elders, one wearing for his totem a tiger, 
the other an eagle, and here also was a monastery, 
the inmates being bound to the duty of praying 
before the statue of this god for rain, health, and 
peace. The novices wore black capes for four 
years, then one of black and red for other four, 
then for the same term a black one with red 
border, again the black and red, then black, and in 
their age, red. They were allowed to visit their 
wives until midnight, when they were summoned 
to return by blasts of a trumpet. The same in- 
strument sounded for prayers at daybreak and at 
sunset. 

Before leaving the country to which he had 
brought prosperity, this god, who was white, 
bearded, and unlike an Aztec, promised to return 
with his children. He had incurred the anger of a 
brother god, and Mexico was no longer a pleasant 
land to him ; so he walked to the sea, carving 
crosses on the rocks as he went, entered his magic 
boat of snake-skin, and floated away to his own cool 
country of Tlapalan, leaving his people mournful. 
Some of them reported that he had died, that his 
ashes had been carried to heaven by brilliant birds, 
220 



Beyond Our Borders 

and that his heart became the morning star. This 
luminary descended into hell for four days, then 
reappeared, more brilliant than ever, as the seat of 
the departed god. The Aztecs soon forgot his 
gentler teachings, at all events, for they restored 
human sacrifice, even at his altar, cutting out the 
heart of their victim, holding it to the sun, then 
throwing it before the image of the god or spirit 
that was the tutelary genius of the temple. After 
this they ate the corpse. At the dedication of the 
temple of Huitzilopochtli in i486 about seventy 
thousand captives were slain to appease the deities. 
Is it any wonder that the consciences of the people 
were troubled ? that they asked one another if the 
white god would praise them, when he came back, 
for turning their temples into shambles ? Signs 
and wonders made them doubt afresh at the begin- 
ning of the sixteenth century. Eight years before 
the arrival of Cortez the lake arose, without rain 
or earthquake, flooding the city of Mexico, sweep- 
ing away houses and drowning many people. Next 
year a tower of the temple took fire, without vis- 
ible cause, and none could put it out. Three 
comets were seen, and a vast pyramid of light stood 
in the east. Voices were heard grieving and whin- 
ing in the air. A royal princess died, and came 
out of her grave to prophesy ruin. An Indian was 
snatched from his field work by an eagle, and car- 
ried to a cave where a spirit told him of coming 
doom, after which the bird flew back with him 
221 



Myths and Legends 

and delivered him safely to the earth where the 
church of San Hipolito now stands. The king of 
Tezcuco, who was an astrologer, was asked to give 
comfort, but could find no promise of it in the 
stars. No wonder, then, that when Cortez landed, 
in panoply and with ceremony, the people kissed 
the boats that brought him, believing that the white 
god was come again ; while others thought upon the 
prophecies, and feared that here was a white devil. 
According to Father Sahagun, the white king- 
god had of old a temple in Tula, and his image was 
placed there, lying extended under blankets. His 
worshippers were expert mechanics and masons : 
they carved the green stone chalchiuite, and had 
foundries for metals. In his honor they built 
houses of silver, chalchiuite, turquoise, sea-shells, 
and wood, and covered them with feathers. On 
the mount of Tzatzitepetl the god spoke to his 
people through a stentorian prophet whose voice 
was heard three hundred miles away in Anahuac. 
He never spoke save wisely, and by obeying him 
the people thrived. They had maize in abundance, 
an ear of it being all that a man could carry, 
pumpkins were two feet thick, cotton-bolls opened 
in a dozen colors, and the birds repaid kind treat- 
ment by filling Tula's streets with color and music. 
Still, Quetzalcoatl had his bad hours, and he did 
penance for his weaknesses by drawing blood from 
his legs with maguey spines. Once, when he was 
ill, the evil god Tezcatlipoca presented himself as 

222 



Beyond Our Borders 

an elderly man who had a cure for his pain of 
body and heaviness of spirit, a water of eternal 
life, and, tasting the mixture, Qaetzalcoatl was so 
pleased that he drained it all, and thereupon 
became drunk, for this cure was wine that stole 
the sense and weakened the will, so that in the 
end the mischief-lover gained his wish. Quetzal- 
coatl quickly grew old, and set off for Tlapalan, 
weeping bitterly, after burying or destroying his 
treasures. His people followed him, playing on 
flutes, till within six miles of the site of Mexico 
city, where he rested on a stone, leaving hand- 
prints and tear-marks on it that may still be seen. 
He threw his jewels into the fountain of Coaapan, 
and rested from the persecution of his enemies for 
twenty ye^rs at Cholula. In crossing the moun» 
tains on his way to the sea his dwarfed and hump- 
backed servants died of cold, but four lads of noble 
birth followed him to Coatzacoalco, where he 
parted with them, aftermaking his prophecy of the 
coming of the new race, and sailed for Tlapalan, 

The wondrous success of Cortez's march to 
the capital made it seem to the subject tribes 
more certain that it was the god who had returned. 
He sent his soldiers into the temples and to the 
tops of the pyramids, to throw down the statues 
of the gods that stood there, and this he did, they 
argued, because those gods had wronged him be- 
fore he went away. As the great figures came 
tumbling down the slopes and stairs the people fell 
223 



Myths and Legends 

and cried in fear, lest the wrath of the deities who 
looked out of the clouds and saw this insult to 
their images should be visited on the multitude. 
Cortez placed wooden virgins and saints on the 
pedestals thus vacated, and the Indians never en- 
treated these new divinities so rudely. At Tlascala 
the people refused to destroy their idols, as they 
were called, but were willing to add those of the 
Christians to their number. A cross was erected 
in one of their squares, where the invaders were 
allowed to celebrate mass without interference, and 
all night a cloud hovered over this cross, shedding 
light upon it, — a phenomenon that decided the 
Indians to be converted. At last, in Mexico, 
Montezuma, once the splendid emperor, now the 
stricken captive, affected to believe that the men 
who had repaid his thousand favors with imprison- 
ment, pillage, and indignity were children of the 
white god, and he asked his people to befriend 
them. As Cortez sat beneath the Tree of Dismal 
Night and wept in the time of his besetment, did 
he think it worth while to pose longer as a god ? 
And when they picked their way among the gory 
corpses of their friends and children, did the Mexi-I 
cans believe that any god could be like Cortez ? 



224 



Beyond Our Borders 

SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE 

IN no part of the world has the Church ruled 
more absolutely than in Mexico. The igno- 
rance and barbarism of the natives made them de- 
sirable subjects for conversion, and also made them 
easy to control, once they had passed under priestly 
sway. Long after civilized protest had put a stop 
to the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition it re- 
mained a power in Mexico, "the strong fort and 
mount of Zion," as the abomination was called, 
continuing until this century. In the city of 
Mexico its victims were roasted alive near the 
church of San Diego, and a monument has been 
raised to the renown of Morelos, its last victim, 
who was put to death in 1815. 

In ordei to spread the faith and enlarge their 
temporal power the spiritual authorities gave cur- 
rency to many tales that in other parts of the world 
would at once have been laughed down as mythical ; 
but they doubtless had their uses. The defeat of 
American troops at Monterey, in the unjust war 
of conquest waged against our neighbor people, 
was ascribed, not to lead, steel, numbers, or gen- 
eralship, but solely to Our Lady of Guadalupe, 
who hovered over the Mexicans during the battle, 
seeking out weak points in the invading army and 
advising the Mexican officers where and how to 
strike. 

Every year, in October, crowds of people go to 
15 225 



Myths and Legends 

dismal Mitla, with presents for the priests, that the 
good fathers may be persuaded to renew their 
prayers and masses for the deliverance of their 
ancestors who died in sin before the conquest, and 
whose souls are haunting the ruins. Probably a 
great cemetery once existed in Mitla. 

Though we have a dim tradition that the Aztecs 
saw spirits hovering over the site of Puebla, the 
circumstance did not impress them, for they took 
no action upon it. It was not until after the con- 
quest that Puebla came into being, — not the Puebla 
de Zaragosa, as it is called to-day, but the Puebla 
de los Angeles : city of the angels. For strategic, 
commercial, and other reasons a town was needed 
between the city of Mexico, of which the Spaniards 
had none too secure a tenure, and the port of Vera 
Cruz, which gave them touch with the other col- 
onies and Spain. On the Bishop of Tlascala they 
imposed the task of fixing a site. He thereupon 
dreamed of a beautiful plain, edged by white- 
topped peaks, and as he looked two angels came 
into his sight who, with rod and chain, set about the 
work of laying off streets. So vivid was his dream 
that when he searched for the spot he recognized 
it immediately on his arrival, and there was built 
one of the fairest of the cities of the south ; almost 
the only large one not erected on Aztec ruins. 

Early in the period of Spanish rule a chief near 
Queretaro, who had adopted Christianity, was 
persuaded that it was his mission to convert an 
226 



Beyond Our Borders 

adjacent tribe to the same faith. Lest the pros- 
pective converts should object, he took with him 
an army, copying the spiritual methods of the 
Spaniards in that respect, and on reaching Quere- 
taro -he commanded his neighbors to pick out their 
strongest men and he would fight them, — that is, 
an equal number of his strongest men would do 
so. The challenged people had no occasion to en- 
gage with him, but he insisted that they should, 
and told them in advance that if his side won the 
other side must become Christians, whereas if the 
pagans were the victors he would go home and 
leave them to their idols. The trouble was finally 
agreed upon, and it shows an already benign in- 
fluence in the new faith that the fight was to be 
without weapons, the combatants agreeing to kick 
and pound instead of slaying each other. It was a 
long and bloody battle, and was waged in the space 
between the armies, that cheered and prayed and 
advised, as lookers-on will always do, even in a base- 
ball game. We do not know what the result might 
have been, but there is a suspicion that the unre- 
generate were getting the better of it, else why 
did the heavens open and the blessed Saint lago 
show himself there, with a red cross in his hand ? 
In presence of this vision the converted chief be- 
came complacently triumphant, and the idolaters 
ran to the Spanish priests, flung themselves at their 
feet, and begged to be baptized and saved from the 
figure in the air. A stone cross was erected under 
227 



Myths and Legends 

the spot where Saint lago appeared, and if any- 
body doubts the tale he is taken to the Church of 
the Holy Cross, where this relic is kept, and it is 
shown to him in proof. 

Another appearance of this saint was during the 
battle that Cortez waged against one hundred and 
fifty thousand (!) Tabascans. To the terrific aspect 
of this heavenly champion, as he swooped upon 
the savages, mounted on a gray horse, is attributed 
the victory. One monkish writer insists that it 
was not the saint that made this charge, but " the 
ever-present Virgin." Cortez returned thanks to 
heaven, and he baptized the twenty women that the 
beaten tribe had given up, before turning them 
over to his soldiers to be fought for. One of 
these women, Marina, who became the mistress of 
Cortez, his spy and interpreter, was the first con- 
vert to Christianity on the American continent. 
A statue has been erected to her in Puebla. 

It has been feared that in some parts of Mexico 
the natives are church people for revenue mainly, 
or that they go to church to avoid trouble and 
rebuke, and this is known to be the case in some 
of the South American states, the Indians of 
Peru, for instance, being pretty fair Christians 
while the white men are looking, though they are 
sun-worshippers at other times. In Yucatan the 
natives have been known to go to church under 
compulsion of the lash. In Cholula the barbarian 
practice of providing food, rum, and woman's milk 
228 



Beyond Our Borders 

for the dead is continued if the vigilance of the 
priests can be avoided, while a rod is buried w^ith 
every dead girl, that she may beat off the mon- 
sters that will assail her on the road to paradise. 
There are caves in the ridge between Popocatepetl 
and Iztaccihuatl in which are old stone statues 
which are still secretly worshipped, their public 
recognition being prohibited. One of these caves 
is alleged by believers to be the opening of a long 
passage under the sea, that leads to Rome, probably 
that good Indians may go there to be blessed, 
after death. Yet this was a home of evil spirits 
before Cortez came, and the people told the 
Spaniards that no man could reach the top of 
Popocatepetl and live. Diego Ordaz climbed as 
far as the snow-line, and Francisco Montano 
reached the top and was lowered into the crater, 
that he might gather sulphur for powder, which 
was sorely needed ; but the natives apparently 
believed that these soldiers were bragging. 

Many old beliefs have disappeared, like those in 
the giant with long, lean arms who embraced and 
smothered the whole Toltec tribe ; the spectre of 
a white child who followed him about, and from 
whose decaying head noxious gases spread over the 
country as it sat on a tall peak, — a possible myth 
of volcanic eruption ; and the Titans who built 
the pyramid of Cholula ; but Miquiztli, the dead 
man, and the crying white woman, Iztaccihuatl, 
walk in the villages of these Indians, while their 
229 



Myths and Legends 

sorcerers change themselves to animals at will, and 
their medicine-men practise their art almost as it 
was practised before the conquest. The people 
are more peaceable than they were, more courteous, 
yet more secretive. 

Izamal was a city of four mounds, the largest 
one hundred and fifty feet high, with a temple on 
its top where old men preached and burned copal 
before the statues to make a pleasant smell. Here, 
every day at noon, the "fiery macaw with sun 
eyes" lighted the fire at the altar. It has been 
hinted that concave mirrors focussing their rays on 
the tinder kindled the flames. However that may 
be, the mounds and temples, having been declared 
sinful by the Spaniards, were ruined, and the people 
were forced to support the church and monastery 
that were presently built in the place. This they 
did more willingly when they found that the Vir- 
gin's statue in the church would cure diseases. 
The images of their old gods had done that too, 
but not so well ; and when a new statue of the 
Virgin arrived from Guatemala, through the rain, 
the priest convinced them of heaven's blessing on 
it, for not a drop had fallen on the box containing 
the figure, nor on those who carried it. In order 
to gain the complete confidence of the Indians, the 
Spaniards had to represent that the Virgin was a 
brown woman who wore an Indian dress. 



230 



Beyond Our Borders 

EAGLE, SNAKE, AND CACTUS 

THE great plaza of the city of Mexico is the 
country's heart. It was here that in 1 3 1 2 
the Aztecs, who had been conducting an Israelitish 
pilgrimage for seven hundred years, marching south- 
ward after their birth in the Seven Caves of Chi- 
comoztoc, saw the sign that had been revealed to 
their astrologers that was to show where they were 
to plant their capital. Here was a lake ; in the 
lake, where now is the zocalo, was a rocky island ; 
on the island was a cactus ; on the cactus was an 
eagle, his great wings spread toward the sun ; in 
his beak and talons was a snake. The sign was 
hailed with cries of rejoicing, and the foundation 
of a great city was begun, a huge teocalli, or 
temple, being the first structure to be erected. As 
it happened, the prophets were frauds. There 
never was a worse place to put a town upon than 
where Mexico stands. It is in a basin, only six feet 
above its lowest part ; it has no natural drainage ; 
the houses had to be built on piles ; the soil is not 
rich ; it is in danger from floods, in the seventeenth 
century it was not dry for five consecutive years, 
people went through its streets in boats, and the 
dampness has caused malarial disorders ; but ex- 
pensive public works have secured dryness and 
heakh and in the high, cool region, in the bright 
sunshine, with snow-covered volcanoes heaved into 
sight, with modern devices for beauty and com- 
23X 



Myths and Legends 

fort, Mexico is in many ways an ideal city* If it 
were to be built again it would be in accordance 
with the plans of engineers and sanitarians, not of 
prophets. Still, the settlers were so well satisfied 
that they adopted the eagle, snake, and cactus as 
their totem, and they remain to-day as the coat of 
arms of the republic. 

Mexicans will tell you that this basin was the 
earliest home of man in the Western world ; maybe 
in all the world. Here were settlements of the 
Ulmeca early in the Christian era, if not before 
its beginning; then, in a.d. 635, came the Chi- 
chimecs, who were routed by the Toltecs that 
came over the great hill of Tulla in 648 and built 
a city there ; and the Aztecs arrived in the year 
890. Here for six centuries it has been the capi- 
talj where the cacique, or native chief, the Spanish 
conqueror, the viceroy, the emperor, the dictator, 
and the president have ruled or served the people. 
The Aztecs were a soldier folk, hence the name 
they gave to it commemorates their war-god, 
Mexitli. On the site of the rocky island the 
invader, Cortez, fought the last battle with Quauh- 
temotzin, and for three centuries the victory was 
celebrated by processions. Here occurred the 
famine riot of 1692, when three million dollars' 
worth of property was wrecked and burned ; here 
stood the gallows, and before the viceroy's palace 
was a frame on which criminals' heads were placed ; 
here functionaries took the oath of office ; but now 
232 



Beyond Our Borders 

the band plays and people take the air on the spot 
where the sign of their liberties was seen. 



TOLD IN YUCATAN 

LONG before the Spaniards knew that there 
was a Western world to conquer, a people 
occupied the tropic belt of the Americas who, at 
the time that the palaces and temples of Central 
America were erected, were the equals of those same 
Spaniards in civilization. These people were archi- 
tects and sculptors, they knew the use of metal, they 
embalmed and entombed their dead, they had roads; 
they had, moreover, a government, a religion, a 
writing, and they built the great cities whose ruins, 
even where overgrown by the dense forests of the 
lowlands, are not less surprising than those of 
Egypt and Assyria. One enthusiastic antiquary, 
who spent some years among the long lost and 
newly found cities of Yucatan, believes that he has 
verified much ancient history as a possession of our 
own. He says that the garden of Eden is in 
Mexico, the tomb of Abel in Yucatan, with in- 
scriptions on it recounting the tragedy, — carved 
possibly by Cain, — and that from this birthplace 
of the human race the Old World was peopled. 
Egypt, he says, was colonized from Yucatan, the 
Egyptian mummies were carried to Africa from 
America, the Sphinx was a monument to Abel, 
erected by his widow, and the Greek alphabet was 
233 



Myths and Legends 

an account, in Yucatan hieroglyphics, of the sinking 
of the continent of Atlantis. The fierce Quiches, 
who have inherited from their ancestors of the 
sixteenth century a hatred of Europeans, or *' white 
monkeys," are thought to keep alive the language 
of the ancient Mayas, which is as old as the 
Sanskrit, if not older, and is believed to be allied 
to that of the ancient Egyptians, the picture-writ- 
ing of the two families showing many things in 
common. 

Yucatan is a Mayax word, meaning *' first land," 
and the country reached from Tehuantepec to 
Darien. The word may a occurs in many Asian, 
African, and European tongues, where it always 
expresses strength and wisdom, and in certain of 
the relics bearded men, like Assyrians, are repre- 
sented as visiting Uxmal and Chichinitza, big cities 
that drew to them scholars from all over the 
country. The story of Cain and Abel occurs in 
Egyptian tradition and in the Sanskrit poem Rama- 
yana in such a form as to assimilate it to the Maya 
legend that the two sons of King Kan (or King 
Snake) fell out on a question of prestige, and 
Prince Aak (The Turtle) stabbed his brother Koh 
(The Leopard), who was embalmed, all but his 
heart, which was cremated and placed in an urn, 
together with the stone spear-head that did the 
murder. Some say that the statue of the slain prince 
is to be seen in the national museum of Mexico, 
where it is labelled Chakmool, the sun god. After 
234 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

this untoward event the assassin, a veritable Richard 
III. of his day, laid a vain siege to the heart of the 
dead man's v^idow. Moo (Macaw), his own sister, 
by the way, the Mayax royal families, like those 
of Egypt, being resolved to keep their blood free 
from plebeian stain; and a wall-painting shows 
Prince Aak with his serpent totem, tempting the 
woman with fruit from a tree in which perches a 
monkey, representing wisdom. Queen Moo raised 
a statue to the departed, the figure of a leopard 
with three stab-wounds in the back ; and on going 
to Egypt afterward, she had the workmen of that 
empire raise a statue to his memory, that took the 
shape of the Sphinx. To this day certain Afri- 
cans wear a leopard-skin as a charm against spear- 
thrusts. 

Another of the traditions of the Mayas was 
that of a flood. All races have this legend. The 
Egyptian priests, who scoffed at the Greeks for 
believing that the entire human race had been 
drowned in Deucalion's deluge, told Solon, never- 
theless, twenty-five hundred years ago, that the 
land of Mu, in the Atlantic Ocean, had sunk in a 
day and night, nine thousand years before his visit. 
A terrific volcanic outburst had destroyed the 
island. Plato told of the same disaster. Over 
the door of a room in the ** house of the dark 
writing" in Chichinitza is another account of the 
lost Atlantis, which has been translated to this 
effect : In the year 6 Kan, 1 1 Muluc, the month 
235 



Myths and Legends 

Zac, occurred terrible earthquakes that kept stead- 
ily on until the 13th Chuen. The country of 
mud-hills, Mu, was destroyed. Twice it was up- 
heaved, then suddenly disappeared in the night. 
When the surface gave way ten countries were torn 
asunder and scattered. Unable to withstand the 
force of the convulsions, they sank, with their 
sixty-four million inhabitants, eight thousand and 
sixty years before the making of the record. The 
superstition attaching to the number 13 is ascribed 
to the occurrence of this appalling catastrophe on 
the 13th Chuen, or February. The blacks that 
the Spaniards found in America are held to be sur- 
vivors from the people of this lost continent. 

We have no living elephants, yet gods and demi- 
gods with elephant-heads were carved by Mayas 
and Aztecs. This proves no alien origin in the 
artists, for the elephant lived in America, doubtless 
within two thousand years. The worship of ser- 
pents is alleged to have originated in the popular 
love for the good king Kan, whose totem, or seal, 
or name-sign, or coat of arms, was a snake. The 
cross is likewise seen in the ornaments of build- 
ings, the ground-plan of a temple in Uxmal is 
cruciform, and statues found in Palenque and other 
ancient cities of Guatemala bear the cross on their 
breasts. Its use is said to be related to the ap- 
pearance of the constellation of the Southern Cross, 
which in the month of Maya, or May, stands above 
the horizon in Mayax, and the people welcome it 
236 



Beyond Our Borders 

because the long, dry season then breaks up in 
copious rain, bringing coolness and plenty to the 
earth. 

We know that Kopan had bound books and 
phonetic writing long before the conquest, as well 
as splendid arts. That education was encouraged 
in ancient Mayax is hardly true, however, since 
learning was surrounded with difficulties and cere- 
monies, though the priests and teachers doubtless 
allowed the children to learn a few simple facts 
without scaring them into as many fits. The haz- 
ing to which candidates for admission to the tem- 
ples were subjected was very dismal. Still, the 
account of it found in the sculptures and in the 
sacred book of the Quiches may be allegorical, 
since it appears to be characteristic of primitive 
peoples never to say a thing plainly if there is any 
way to cover it with parable and set people to 
quarrelling about it afterward. The ancient initia- 
tion was this : First, the unhappy wretch who 
wanted to learn the multiplication table and other 
portentous knowledge had to cross a river of mud 
and another of blood. There are no such rivers, 
except in-doors. However, when he got over he 
had to walk on four roads, white, red, green, and 
black, which took him to a hall where a number 
of veiled priests awaited him. He had first to 
pick out the priest who was made of wood, be- 
cause one of the party was bogus, and he was then 
invited to be seated. The stone bench was burn- 
237 



Myths and Legends 

ing hot, and when the victim pensively arose the 
company said it was a lesson to him not to be 
familiar in presence of his superiors. Then he 
had to spend a night in a guarded cell holding a 
lighted torch in his hand and a smaller one in his 
mouth. These he must not put out, yet they 
must go out, and he must give them back in the 
morning, under penalty of beating and death. The 
next act in this useful and entertaining perform- 
ance was to defend himself against the attacks of 
an able-bodied spearman. Then he passed a night 
in an ice-house, — and where did they get the ice ? 
— and danced for ten hours to keep from freez- 
ing and catching pneumonia. Another night in a 
den of wild animals prepared him for nearly any- 
thing that might follow, and if he still wanted to 
study the multiplication table he was put into a 
house where fires were burning all night. After 
this what was left of him was thrown into the 
house of bats, and these pleasant creatures got into 
his hair and nibbled his flesh and nearly put his 
eyes out with their wings, while Camazotz, the 
bat god, who, you may be sure, was one of the 
priests in disguise, capered about, trying to get a 
chance to cut off his head. If the scholar lived 
through all this he was congratulated, and spent 
the rest of his days pining for a chance to initiate 
others. Such performances had their use. It was 
the able that survived. 



238 



Beyond Our Borders 

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE 

THE hill of Guadalupe is a place of pilgrimage 
for Christians to-day, as it was for nature- 
worshippers more than a thousand years ago, when 
it was called Tapeyacac. Here stood a temple of 
the goddess of corn, sometimes named the fruit- 
bearer, also mother of the gods. When the 
Spaniards came they told the people that in pray- 
ing to this principle of life they were doing an 
evil thing. The invaders smashed the temple into 
ruin and tore up the road that led to it, but the 
natives kept climbing to the top to give their 
homage, as of old, to the creative forces that were 
symbolized in their statues. It was not deemed 
advisable to keep the Mexicans virtuous by killing, 
maiming, robbing, and enslaving them too con- 
stantly, lest they should become restive, yet the 
good priests were in distress that the natives re- 
fused to put the ** Christian God mother in place 
of the heathen mother of the gods." But all came 
about as they would have it, without long resort to 
violence, for on the 9th of January — this was in 
1 53 1 — a reformed native who bore the Christian 
name of Juan Diego heard angels singing on this 
hill as he passed it on his way to mass, and a shining 
lady appeared to him with an order to report to the 
bishop what he had seen and heard, and to tell him 
that she wished a church to be built, in her name, 
on the hill where she was standing, 
239 



Myths and Legends 

In no wise disturbed by this vision, for he was an 
Indian, Juan Diego repaired to the functionary and 
delivered the divine command. The bishop was 
sinfully suspicious, or obtuse, seeming to think that 
if any such order were given it should have been 
to him, personally, rather than to an ignorant 
Aztec, and he refused to build. Juan went back to 
the hill and told the shining lady that the bishop 
was sceptical. She directed Juan to climb the hill 
again next day, so he went back in the morning, 
which was Sunday, and she sent him to the bishop 
with the same order. His excellency sent the 
Indian packing again, and told him to bring proof 
that what he said was true. Juan trudged back to 
the hill-top, and on relating this second failure was 
ordered by the shining lady to return again next 
day, when she would cure the bishop of his doubts. 
Juan was kept so busy with these errands for two 
days that his poor uncle at home became very weak 
with hunger and neglect, and on reaching his cabin 
the old man bade him hurry for a priest to shrive 
him, for his end was near. Early in the morning 
the Indian, now weary with much travel, set off 
for town, and, fearing to have more errands put 
upon him, he went around the mountain, his bare 
feet patting softly over the earth, but again the 
shining lady arose in his path and repeated her 
command that the bishop should build a church 
for her. Juan begged to be allowed to pass, for 
his uncle was dying. The shining one bade him 
240 



Beyond Our Borders 

not to think of the old man, for he had already 
recovered his health through a divine ordinance. 
The messenger must pick the flowers at his feet 
and carry them to the bishop in his blanket. 
Flowers ? There were no flowers in that barren 
spot. Why, yes ! For, look : the ground was 
gay with them. The Aztecs loved color and per- 
fume, and to gather these pretty blossoms was a 
congenial task. Juan filled his blanket and hurried 
to the bishop, hoping that he would be convinced 
at last. And he was ; for it was found that the 
juice of the crushed flowers had painted on the 
blanket, which he immediately took from its owner, 
a beautiful portrait of the shining lady, — none other 
than the Holy Virgin. 

This portrait was seen to be authentic, for it was 
the same as one in the village of Guadalupe, in 
Spain, and forthwith the hill of Tepeyacac became 
the hill of Guadalupe, and the bishop made all 
haste to amend for his unseemly doubts by begin- 
ning work on the church, long since replaced by 
one of the finest cathedrals in the Western world. 
The bishop and Juan together had little difficulty 
in proving to the Indians that the spot was hence- 
forth sacred to the Virgin, and that heathen wor- 
ship could be tolerated there no longer. The hill 
is now a place of yearly pilgrimage, by sanction of 
the pope, who set aside the 12th of December for 
that purpose, and confirmed the choice of the 
people in making Our Lady of Guadalupe pro- 
16 241 



Myths and Legends 

tector of New Spain. She has ever been a kind 
patron ; she has led them in their wars for liberty ; 
from 1629 to 1634, when the city of Mexico was 
a Venice, Our Lady of Guadalupe lived there, in 
order to make the water go down. 

On the hill are a stone mast and chapel that were 
set up by sailors whom she delivered from ship- 
wreck. The mast with its sail they carried on 
their shoulders all the way from Vera Cruz, and 
after planting it here they encased it in stone that 
it might endure forever. Near by is the spring 
that broke out when she angrily stamped her foot 
on learning of the bishop's obstinacy. The mud 
about this holy well is eaten by the devout for its 
moral and healing properties. Juan Diego, in 
effigy, upholds the pulpit in the chapel of the well, 
and his blanket, with its radiant picture, is framed 
in gold and silver in the great church, ** the holiest 
shrine in Mexico." 



OUR LADY OF THE REMEDIES 

AS Our Lady of Guadalupe hears the prayers 
of those who suiFer from too much rain, so 
Our Lady of the Remedies heeds the request of 
those who lack it, and sometimes the agricultural 
interests of the valley lead the farmers into a 
conflict of petitions. A dozen miles from the 
capital rises the hill of Totoltepec, crowned in 
former centuries by a temple. In the shelter of 
242 



Beyond Our Borders 

that work, which his own men had injured, Cortez 
and his army rested during the retreat of the Noche 
Triste. As a protection against the native hordes, 
one of his soldiers carried an image of the Virgin 
that had been brought from Spain. It had been 
set up in a public place, with Montezuma's per- 
mission, but Cortez feared that the angered people 
would destroy it, as he had destroyed the statues of 
their gods. Wounded, and tired, the soldier for- 
sook his trust and hid the figure near the temple. 
In 1635 a reformed Aztec found it in a clump of 
maguey, and, delighted with his discovery, was for 
taking it home with him, when the image began to 
work miracles to show its intention to remain on 
the hill. The priests decided that a chapel must 
be built for it, and this was erected, the Virgin re- 
warding her worshippers by continuing her miracles 
and benefits, especially that of giving copious rains 
after the dry season. So greatly was she esteemed 
that during the civil war in the early part of the 
nineteenth century the royalists took the statue to 
the city with them when Hidalgo drove them in, 
and made it a general in their army, as Our Lady 
of Guadalupe had become a leader on the other 
side. But her efforts were without avail, and when 
the republicans triumphed, the people were so in- 
dignant at her faithlessness in accepting a com- 
mission from their enemies that they stripped away 
her jewels, valued at a million dollars, broke her 
nose oiF, cut out one eye, and formally decreed 
243 



Myths and Legends 

her banishment from the country. The latter 
sentence was never carried out, for she was too 
strongly placed in the affections of some of the 
people to make her removal possible, so that she is 
now back on the hill where Cortez's soldier left 
her, and there she rewards the faithful and de- 
serving according to their prayers and needs. 

SOME OTHER MIRACLES 

IN Jesus of Nazareth Church, Mexico City, stands 
an image of great age, known as Our Lady 
of the Ball. It was at one time the property of a 
poor man in Ixtapalapan, who made a shrine for it 
and worshipped it constantly. It would have been 
better for all concerned if his religion had been more 
in his life and less on his lips, for on the mere sus- 
picion that his wife had been flirting with some 
dusky neighbors he charged her with infidelity, re- 
fused to listen to denials and explanations, and 
loaded his old horse-pistol, intending to shoot her 
as she knelt at the foot of the Virgin. The 
woman begged the protection of the statue so earn- 
estly that, just as the husband fired, the statue 
threw out its hand and turned the course of the 
bullet so that it entered the clay wall of the cabin. 
This intervention convinced the man that his wife 
was innocent, and the couple worshipped the statue 
so incessantly afterward that it was hardly possi- 
ble to get them to work, until the priests carried 
244 



Beyond Our Borders 

It away to the capital, where they were sure that 
it would do good to more than two people. 

In the chapel of the convent of Our Lady of 
the Conception, Mexico City, the Sisters were puz- 
zled by what sounded like the ticking of a clock, 
although there was no clock in or near the building 
whose pendulum was set to so slow a swing. The 
chapel was inspected frequently without result, 
until a nun more adventurous than the rest discov- 
ered that the noise was made by drops of water 
falling behind the organ. The miraculous part of 
this occurrence is that it came from a dry ceiling, 
and there was no water above it. The Virgin at 
length revealed to one of the Sisters in a dream 
that so long as the water ticked off the hours the 
building was safe, but that when it ceased to fall 
the building must fall instead. And it did. It 
fell into the hands of prosaic reformers and real 
estate dealers, who partitioned it into dwellings. 

From this it appears that the power of the spir- 
itual authorities over water had declined since the 
time of that priest in Tacubaya who on a hot day 
rested beneath a tree and blessed it for shading him. 
The result of his blessing is seen in the constant 
greenness of the arbol benito and the continued 
flow of a spring that gushed into being under its 
root at that moment. 

In 1580 an Aztec chief saw a picture of the Vir- 
gin floating about in the flood in Mexico City and 
rescued it. As soon as the inundation had subsided 
245 



Myths and Legends 

he made a chapel of adobe on the spot where it 
had been found, and placed the picture in it. 
Though the lazy people did not keep the building 
in repair, allowing its roof to fall and its sides to 
breach and crack, the Virgin always protected her 
picture from the rain and dirt, and at last the mys- 
terious canvas was housed in the church of Our 
Lady of the Angels, which was built for it. The 
figure of the Virgin is now hidden behind a dress 
that a pious tailor made for her in 1776. 

THE PICTURE AND THE STORM 

THE church of Our Lady of Piety, in Mexico 
City, was founded by the Dominicans in 1652. 
Shortly before that time a member of the order 
went abroad on some business to the Holy City, 
and was directed, while there, to order a picture 
of the Virgin and the dead Christ from the most 
famous painter in Rome. This commission he 
fulfilled, but the artist, being of a postponing dis-« 
position, made such slow progress that when it was 
time for the monk to start back to America the 
work had been merely sketched, and not a brushful 
of color had been applied to it. In those times a 
journey of such distance was not undertaken every 
day, and as it might never fall to the Dominican to 
visit Rome again, he concluded to carry the picture 
with him, slight though it was. He paid the artist 
a small sum, jogged on muleback and trundled in 
246 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

carriages to Spain, and there took a vessel for 
Mexico, the canvas, closely rolled, forming a part 
of his luggage. 

Not many days from port a furious storm set in, 
and it seemed doubtful if the ship could weather it. 
Sails were torn, cordage broken, bulwarks staved, 
and all on board were in terror, until, at the monk's 
suggestion, they vowed to build a church to the 
Virgin in Mexico if she would permit them to 
reach that land in safety. She allowed the storm 
to rage a little longer, the better to impress them 
with their peril, then the clouds were scattered, 
the waves stilled, the winds abated, and the ship 
rode serenely into harbor. The sailors were as 
good as their word. They spent their time ashore 
in collecting money, and with it the Dominicans 
laid the foundations of this church. After the altar 
had been completed the monk bethought him of the 
drawing he had brought from Rome. He unrolled 
it, and, to the astonishment and admiration of all, 
it was finished in color, to the last brush-stroke. 
It hangs above the altar, and is greatly venerated. 

THE MISCHIEVOUS COCKTAIL 

NEW World drinks are a grateful astonish- 
ment to visiting foreigners, and a matter of 
joyful pride among the natives, for the perform- 
ances of our bar-tenders have been studied by 
French, Germans, and English without avail, the 
247 



Myths and Legends 

strong or sodden fluids sold over the so-called 
** American bars" in Europe being a reflection on 
American art. Among these various beverages 
none is more popular than the cocktail : a gulp of 
liquor in a cold glass, with a dash of bitters and 
syrup, a drop of lemon, and a garnish of fruit ; and 
it is said to be quite pleasant. In their names 
our various inventions are stimulative of curiosity, 
though stone fence, Tom Collins, high ball, v^hiskey 
rickey, gin sling, silver fizz, whiskey skin, whiskey 
daisy, cobbler, smash, and royal punch are more 
apt to excite apprehension than thirst among the 
uninitiated. Cocktail, especially, is a term that has 
not received the amount of study that was its due 
among philologists and historians, though lame at- 
tempts are made to account for it on the score that 
physicians used to anoint the sore throats and 
swollen tonsils of their patients with a cock's 
feather that had been dipped into healing lotions, 
— an operation that explains the Colorado terms 
** throat paint" and ^' tonsil varnish" as applied to 
whiskey, but that brings us no nearer to the origin 
of cocktail, it being a mere and obvious guess that 
gargles succeeded the feather applications, that 
doses succeeded the gargles, and that drinks suc- 
ceeded the doses. Another ineiFective tradition is 
that in the sixties sprigs of mint, used in the prep- 
aration of mint-juleps, were called cocktails, because 
they had not the slightest resemblance to any kind 
of tails, and are not used in cocktails anyhow. 
248 



Beyond Our Borders 

No : the true tale of the cocktail antedates 
Columbus. It has to do with the Toltecs in the 
eleventh century. In Mexico the common drink 
is pulque, a poor beer made from the sap of the 
maguey plant. The exhilarating possibilities of 
this juice were discovered by a native of Tula, who 
was either a nobleman at the time or was ennobled 
for his service to the race. Finding pulque to be 
a good thing, from the Mexican point of taste, he 
sent his daughter. The Flower of Tula, to the 
emperor with samples. His majesty having con- 
sumed a couple of quarts of the beverage was 
vastly comforted, and, being in a mood to do good, 
he offered to let the nobleman's daughter be one 
of his wives. His offer having been suddenly ac- 
cepted, for royal offers of this kind are never re- 
fused, he declared that the drink was fine enough 
to perpetuate in its name the beauties and graces of 
the demoiselle who had been his Hebe, and he 
called it, after her, Xochitl. Moreover, he started 
an inebriate asylum of his own, and kept his im- 
perial skin well filled with the mysterious juice, 
thus offering an example to other kings, who are 
frequently in debt for their cheer. 

The head wife of the king, who regarded this 
new-comer in the harem with sharp disfavor, was 
reminded that she had never invented a drink, and 
that silence was becoming to women. In time the 
inheritor of the kingdom was to be declared, and 
the choice fell, not on the son of the older wife, 
249 



Myths and Legends 

but on that of Xochitl. The family disturbance 
that began then led to faction fighting and the final 
disruption and downfall of the Toltec dynasty, 
though the Aztecs continued the brewing industry, 
and they keep on making pulque and the worse 
mescal in Tula to this day. People in Mexico 
and on the edge thereof worried along with the 
name of Xochitl for the insidious destroyer for 
years and years, for they had not gumption enough 
even to use an easy word, unless somebody showed 
them how. Somebody did. It was the United 
States army. It went to Mexico, conquered it, 
found it warm work, acquired a thirst, was served 
with xochitl, couldn't say it, though it could drink 
it, called it cocktail, and there you are. 

THE COUNCILLORS OF LAGOS 

SOME of the things that they tell about the 
Dutch aldermen in New Amsterdam, in the 
days of Peter the wooden-legged and iron-headed, 
are strangely like some other things that have hap- 
pened in this strange land of the sun. Lagos, a 
thriving city of twenty thousand people, was for a 
long time the butt of light wits from other towns, 
and its councillors seem to have been chosen 
with especial reference to unfitness for their places, 
wherein they differ from all other statesmen. They 
have a bridge in that city which for some time was 
allowed to bear this inscription : 
250 



Beyond Our Borders 

This bridge was built in Lagos. 
To walk under, and not over. 

Needless to add that some joker had painted on 
the last half of the sentence. There were twelve 
of the famous law-givers in Lagos, and they were 
accustomed on assembling in their hall to occupy 
a long wooden bench. One day six of them ar- 
rived in advance of the others and sat down, each 
with his hat beside him, — the big som.brero that 
takes as much seat-space as a man. Presently came 
the other six, who looked at the bench in astonish- 
ment. 

** Santa Maria !" exclaimed one of them. ** The 
dry season is here, and it shrinks the bench." 

*^ True," said another ; '* but perhaps if we all 
pull hard we can stretch it out as long as it used to 
be." 

Up arose the six, put on their hats like the rest, 
and all pulled. Then the twelve sat down with 
their hats on, and, lo ! there was room for all. 

At another time the people were much troubled 
by a hole that had been left on the plaza in con- 
sequence of some public work. Our wise men 
ordered it to be filled. The dirt to fill it was dug 
about fifty feet away, and that left another hole. 
Children were continually tumbling into it, near- 
sighted and elderly citizens had narrow escapes 
every day, graceless beings who had looked upon 
the fire-water when it was inflammable fell into it 
head first and went to sleep. This second hole 
251 



V 



Myths and Legends 

was worse than the first, because the people had 
not grown used to it. So the councillors held 
another meeting and resolved to fill, this second 
pit. The contractor took the earth from a place 
some yards away, and this left a third hole. In 
time this, too, was filled, and the holes thus pro- 
ceeded in a slow and orderly fashion until they had 
been chased to the edge of the town, where the 
last one was left for time and the dumpings from 
neighboring residences to abate its dangers. Lagos 
may have been the original place where it was de- 
cided to build a new jail in this fashion : " Re- 
solved, that we build a new jail. Resolved, that 
we build it out of the materials of the old one. 
Resolved, that we use the old one until the new one 
is built." 

The next time that the minds of the councillors 
were disturbed was when it was found that grass 
was growing on the roof of one of its public build- 
ings. How could it be shorn ? Various costly 
expedients were suggested, but the most wakeful 
intellect in the company conceived this remedy, 
and his plan was adopted : a road was built from 
the street to the top of the house, a cow was driven 
up this road to the roof, the cow ate the grass, was 
driven down again, the road was carted away, and 
the council slumbered. 



252 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE HUMPBACK OF COLIMA 

IN Colima, which stands in the shadow of peaks 
that spire to a height of sixteen thousand feet 
above the sea, lived a wood-chopper, hump-backed, 
poor, but merry and kind, beloved by all the chil- 
dren, ready to share their games and make toys for 
them. Juan worked hard, lived hard, but sang all 
day long. For neighbor he and his wife had Emilio 
Romero, who had also been a peon, but was now 
rich, and people said he had gained his money in a 
devious fashion, if he had not actually robbed men 
in the highway. With money Romero took on a 
*^ nasty" pride that made him snub his old com- 
panion ; yet he put on none of the decencies of 
life to support his state, for he would get drunk, 
beat his wife, and was an uncomfortable citizen. 
It was while chopping a tree in the wood one 
afternoon that Juan suffered what he thought was a 
misfortune, so soon as he was in any state to think, 
for he was stunned by a falling limb, and did not 
regain his senses until the rise of the moon. Prop- 
ping himself on his elbow, he rubbed his noddle 
and looked curiously about him, for he had heard 
voices, and presently he could see in the dusk a 
crowd of elves dancing about the glade. They were 
singing the Spanish words for *^ Monday, Tuesday, 
Wednesday — three," over and over again. 

** Why don't you sing the rest ?" asked Juan. 

*' We don't know it," piped the little creatures. 
253 



Myths and Legends 

** It's like this : Thursday, Friday, Saturday — 
six." 

The elves leaped and tumbled about in delight at 
being able to learn the rest of the song, and they 
chorused it with zest. After a little one of them 
said, '^ We ought to pay Juan for his goodness. 
Let's take off his hump." 

How they did it he never knew, and the neigh- 
bors said it was the falling tree that did it, any- 
way ; but Juan arose from the earth a straight, 
sound man. Ah, but he went home with a hump 
on his back none the less, — a hump nearly as big 
as the old one, only it was made of gold, and car- 
ried in a bag. With many good-byes and kind 
wishes the elves took leave of Juan, and in the 
moonlight he tramped away to his home, where he 
astonished his wife by showing the quantity of 
treasure that the fairies had given to him. Juan 
immediately bought a house and set up a shop with 
his money, and this led Romero to wonder whom 
he could have robbed, to grow so suddenly wealthy ; 
for it never occurred to him that honesty could 
have its rewards no less than industry. By per- 
sistent questioning of Juan's wife the envious fellow 
learned the story, and at first he disbelieved it. 
''Dwarfs!" quoth he. ''There are no such crea- 
tures in Mexico. Yet, I do remember it was a 
savage dwarf that built the Soothsayer's House, in 
Uxmal, in a night. Perhaps it is so, and if I see 
them, I, too, shall win my share of elfin gold." 
254 



Beyond Our Borders 

It irked him to think that his once poor neighbor 
was richer now than he. So he went to the wood 
and pretended to sleep, and presently the little 
people came out, sure enough, and danced about, 
singing, as before, — 

Lunes, Martes, Miercoles — tresj 
Jueves, Viernes, Sabado — seis. 

" Why don't you end it ?" asked Romero, sud- 
denly sitting up. 

^* How ?" they cried. 

'^ Domingo — siete." (Sunday — seven.) 

They tried it, then shrieked, '* Why, it doesn't 
rhyme. It spoils it all." And they fell upon the 
intruder, pulled his hair and cuffed him soundly. 
Then they recognized him as a proud, mean man 
and a robber, and they put Juan's old hump on his 
back, which he wore ever after. That is why 
people who interrupt, or make needless and foolish 
remarks in company, are quieted by saying, *' Do- 
mingo — siete." 

WHY CHOLULA PYRAMID WAS BUILT 

IN the land of Anahuac and elsewhere were 
many giants. The Tlascalans who showed 
their bones — real bones, taller than a man — could 
not be persuaded that such things might have be- 
longed to lizards and elephants, for there are no 
such animals about here now. The Tlascalan 
255 



Myths and Legends 

people were so annoyed by the misbehavior of the 
giants, many centuries ago, that they were forced 
to kill them or drive them into the wilderness, 
to perish of starvation. Nevertheless, so many 
were left that the lives of the people were in 
constant peril, and around Cholula the monsters 
became so wicked that the gods decided to de- 
stroy them, even though they incidentally had 
to drown or change the innocent also, and they 
poured a mighty deluge upon the earth. All the 
people were overcome by the sea and turned into 
fishes, except seven, who succeeded in gaining a 
cave, where they stayed until the waters were 
withdrawn, either into the sky or under the earth, 
when they came forth and peopled the world 
again. It appears that these folk learned little 
from having been drowned, for they acquired new 
sins, and, in order to get the better of the gods in 
the event of another deluge, they decided to rear 
a pyramid whose top should reach the heavens. 
They might have climbed any of the great vol- 
canoes, but perhaps those peaks were in eruption ; 
and they began to build on Cholula plain. Bricks 
were shaped and sun-dried at a distance from this 
spot, were passed along from hand to hand by a 
file of men extending for miles across the country, 
and after being put in place were plastered with 
bitumen or some other sticky substance. The 
work was not to proceed far, because this monu- 
ment of presumption angered the gods anew, and 
256 



Beyond Our Borders 

according to one report they bent down from the 
heavens and blew off its top, their breath striking 
the earth as a tornado, while another account says 
that they hurled down fire. Reasons for this latter 
version are strengthened by the fact that a great 
meteorite was preserved in the sun-god's temple on 
the summit of the pyramid, where it probably 
fell, and was greatly venerated* This meteor, the 
priests said, was the thunderbolt of the gods. On 
the destruction of the mound, which some say was 
merely defensive in its purpose, the people were 
further punished by being unable to understand 
one another. Aztec historians said that Cholula 
pyramid was built, not by giants or wicked people, 
but by the fair god, or prophet, Quetzalcoatl ; for 
he lived there, taking refuge from his enemies 
(Cholula means "place of the fugitive"), and 
teaching useful arts and forms of worship to the 
inhabitants. A relic of his father, a quantity of 
blond human hair, was shown to the Spaniards 
when they came, but the god himself had long 
been gone to happier climes. 

THE ARK ON COLHUACAN 

OUR Aboriginal deluge legends resemble the 
Bible narrative of the flood more closely 
than do those of any other people. The fertile- 
minded Ignatius Donnelly says that it is because 
they came direct from the continent of Atlantis, 
17 257 



Myths and Legends 

the sinking whereof in earthquake throes gave rise 
to the story of a destruction of all the earth's peo- 
pk, save a handful of the w^iser. In the cosmogony 
of the Mexicans the world has passed through four 
ages : an age of giants, who were killed by famine ; 
a succeeding age that ended in an enormous fire ; 
an age of monkeys ; and the age of " the sun of 
water," that ends in a deluge. The man, Coxcox, 
and the woman, Xochiquetzal, who survived floated 
about in a boat or raft hewn from a cypress trunk. 
This tale is variously told in different parts of the 
country, the Mechoacaneses relating that the man, 
with his wife and children, made a big vessel, 
drove animals into it, and also laid in a stock of 
grain, with which to replenish the earth when the 
seas should subside. After floating for one hundred 
and four years on the shoreless ocean, Coxcox freed 
a vulture. It never went back. Possibly it fell 
into the sea ; mayhap it found some lonely peak 
rising from the flood and stayed there to feed on the 
drowned creatures. Then some other birds were 
set at liberty, and at last the humming-bird, the 
only one of them all to return, appeared to Coxcox 
with green leaves in its beak. The subsidence had 
begun. Presently the ark found shore at Antlan, 
wherever that may be, but it kept on to Chapul- 
tepec, and finally settled upon Mount Colhuacan, 
to which they gave the name of Antlan, after the 
first landing-place. Looking forth, the weary ones 
could see that the hills grew green as fast as the 
258 



Beyond Our Borders 

waters dropped away. They left their boat where 
it had found land, and went down into the com- 
fortable valleys. 



MAKING THE SUN 

THERE was a time of darkness on the young 
earth, when the air was thick and damp and 
winds blew keen, when deep waters covered the 
valleys and strange creatures wallowed in the ocean 
slime, when faint forms of light appeared in the 
sky, though men could see little by them, when 
men were hungry, chilled, and sad. Wearying of 
this state, the earth gods built a temple on a tall 
place and called on the higher gods for light, beg- 
ging also that the waters might be drawn off a 
little, so as to leave more foot-room. They prayed 
long, they offered sacrifices, they expressed humility, 
and sought commiseration by cutting themselves with 
stone knives. In time the waters drew away and 
there was light. Then came a hurricane that swept 
off trees, mounds, houses, and those people who 
had not hidden from its violence in caves, and the 
darkness brooded once more. No lamp had shone 
in heaven for many years, and the gods gathered at 
last at Teotihuacan, less than twenty miles from 
Mexico, and made a great fire, while they debated 
what should be done to make the land more happy. 
At last they told the people who had fallen pros- 
trate about them that if any one would cast him- 
259 



Myths and Legends 

self into the fire he should receive worship and 
honor, and win a place in the sky, as a sun. 

One of the men, Nanahuatzin, advanced with 
reverences, and begged that he might be light- 
bearer for the world. His request was granted. 
With a cry of farewell to his people he plunged into 
the blazing mass. The flames eddied about him, 
vast showers of sparks went up, and the heavens 
were overcast more blackly than before. Now the 
people turned their backs to the fire and began to 
peer this way and that, curiously, eagerly, for in the 
long time of darkness they had forgotten where 
the east and the west lay, and even what the sun 
was like. At last came a bright star, heralding the 
dawn, and then all voices cried, ** There !" It 
was in the east. Then the people implored the 
god whose sign is the snake to make an end of the 
fogs and coldness, and change Nanahuatzin, accord- 
ing to the promise. Soon a green light appeared, 
edging the horizon against the sky ; it heightened 
and cleared, and in a joy the people danced, with j 
faces toward the east, holding high their pans of 
smoking incense, and presently they dropped for- 
ward, for the sun was up. At first he gave little j 
heat, for the mist hung about him, the earth dried j 
slowly, and the people sang a hymn lamenting all ;| 
who had died in the dark. *' We, indeed, have 
seen the sun, but now that his light appears, what 
has become of them?" At each rising the sun 
grew warmer, the ice left the ponds, the plains | 
260 



Beyond Our Borders 

dried and became green, birds sang and animals 
gambolled in delight; and, always keeping their 
faces toward the sun, the people forgot their other 
gods. When, at length, they turned to Teotihua- 
can, lo ! those other gods were figures of stone. 
The sun had petrified the beings from whom he 
had gained his power, and, forgetting their dead 
divinities, the people gave all their worship to the 
new one, the source of life. 

THE POPUL VUH 

THE Popul Vuh, the book of the Quiches, of 
Guatemala, was translated into Spanish in 
1 72 1 by Francisco Ximinez, a Dominican priest in 
a small Indian town in that state. Most of his 
manuscripts were destroyed, on account of the rev- 
elations he had made of the sly and brutal measures 
to which the Spaniards resorted in their hope of 
gain and conquest, and this work was hidden in a 
convent for over a century. The book says that 
the heaven was made by him who was creator, 
father, mother, and cherisher, the wise and excel- 
lent one. Nothing was, but the sky and sea : 
utterly still. And the lesser gods brooded. All 
through immensity nothing moved nor made a sound. 
When the silence was broken the creator spoke to 
the sea, crying, " Earth !" and instantly it arose 
through the waters, the mountains leaping like fish, 
with torrents streaming down their sides, and trees 
261 



Myths and Legends 

appeared. The lesser gods were filled with won- 
der and delight, crying, *^ Blessed, O Heart of 
Heaven, Hurakan, Thunderbolt !" In the sign 
Tochtli was the earth created ; in Acatl, the lights ; 
in Tecpatl, the beasts. On the seventh day man 
was built out of dust and made alive. But first 
the animals were told to hail the gods, worship 
them, and speak their names adoringly. The crea- 
tures tried, but could only grunt and chirp and 
croak, and the gods said, ^^ As you cannot praise 
us, you shall be broken with teeth, and eaten." 
The first man, of clay, could speak, but could not 
turn his head, and had no mind, so he was thrown 
into the sea, a failure. Next a man and a woman 
were made of soft wood, and they peopled the 
world with little wooden men, but they had no 
blood, they dried in the sun, and they did not 
know how to pacify their makers' greed for praise, 
so the heavens rained gum on them, their houses 
fell, the trees shook them out of their branches, 
the caves shut themselves against them, and, being 
unsheltered, they went mad. Beasts and birds were 
sent to tear their flesh, pull out their eyes, and 
crush their bones, and the few that escaped became 
apes, the parents of the monkey tribe*. 

Again the gods made men, this time of maize, 
and this time perfect. Large, bold, strong, four 
fathers of the race to be, they stood under the 
single light of the morning star and with one voice 
began to repeat thanks to the gods. After their 
262 



Beyond Our Borders 

hunger for worship had waned, the gods once more 
fell into doubt. The men were too perfect, too 
nearly like themselves ; they saw too far ; their 
attention must be taken in some other way than by 
the gods. So four women were made while the 
men slept, and when they awoke they were de- 
lighted, and looked, not on the gods, but on their 
wives. They travelled to the west, and soon the 
earth was peopled, men living peacefully in the 
twilight, still wondering at times why they had 
been made, but resuming again their praise for 
being placed on earth, and hoping for a sun. Cer- 
tain gods came down to Tulanzuiva, or the Seven 
Caves, and lived among them, that they might be 
applauded more constantly, and also to supply them 
with fire, for it was raw and dark, and there was 
much rain. The rain put out the flames, but Tohil, 
the fire-god, roused them again by stamping with 
his sandal. In this land of Tulan the speech of 
the four fathers was changed, so that they could no 
longer understand one another, and under Tohil 
they set off to look for another home. They suf- 
fered much, and at one time had nothing nearer to 
food than the smell of raw wood. Mountains 
they crossed, and seas, though the waters parted to 
make a dry road for them. 

Finally they reached Mount Hakavitz, named 

thus for one of their gods, and at last the sun arose 

that they had so long awaited. The men fell upon 

their faces and sent up cries of thankfulness, while 

263 



Myths and Legends 

the beasts gambolled in delight. The old gods 
were turned to stone, yet still the men knelt and 
praised them, and cut themselves and held the blood 
to them in cups, and offered freshly slain animals, 
A city was founded, and the people of it spent a 
part of their time every day in telling the gods how 
great they were. Incessant praise being not enough, 
their gods now demanded human victims, and these 
the priests began to steal from outlying villages, 
purposely covering and confusing the trails by which 
they regained the mountain, and trying to spread 
the belief that wild animals had destroyed the miss- 
ing men. Finally the villagers arose against the 
Quiches, but none can defeat the gods, and in the 
end the rebels submitted and became a tributary 
people. Then came the summons to the four 
fathers to quit the earth, for their work was done. 
Calling their wives and children to them, they said 
farewell, cautioning them to praise their memories, 
and instantly they vanished. In the place where 
they had been was a great bundle without a seam. 
This was called The Enveloped Majesty, and the 
people long burned incense before it. 



FATHERS OF THE MIZTECS 



i 



FAR back, in the time before light, when the 
earth was covered with water and slime, a god 
and a goddess appeared. They knew their power, 
and they practised it in building a palace for them- 
264 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

selves that should be worthy of the occupancy of 
gods. It was vast in size, splendid in appoint- 
ments, a true Walhalla, and on its roof was a cop- 
per axe, edge upmost, on which the heavens rested. 
The rock on which this palace stood was near 
Apoala, in Mizteca Alta, and was called The Place 
of Heaven. Two sons were born to these deities, 
the elder amusing himself as an eagle by long 
flights through the air, and the other turning him- 
self into a winged snake, in which form he could 
pass through rocks. Such were the roaring and 
clashing in their wild rushes that the mountains 
rang with echoes. These sons made a temple in a 
flowering and fruiting meadow, where they burned 
incense in clay vessels and made sacrifices to their 
father and mother, praising them greatly and beg- 
ging for a better light. Their garden was the only 
dry place, except the Place of Heaven, and they 
prayed that the waters might be drawn off so as to 
leave other spots to stand on. In order to please 
the parents more, the sons lacerated themselves, 
cutting their ears and tongues with stones and 
throwing the blood over the garden, with willow 
twigs. Thus they gained light and other favors. 
Afterward came the human race, and being wicked 
it was drowned from off the face of the earth, all 
save the ruling family, for this did not owe its 
origin to the gods, but to two great trees that stood 
at the gate of Apoala gorge, bending in a constant 
gale. Each of these trees begat a boy, and the 
265 



Myths and Legends 

braver of the two, finding the sun mischievous in 
its glare and heat, shot at it v^ith arrows until he 
had much wounded it and forced it to hide behind 
the mountains. To our own day the Miztec coat 
of arms remains, — a chief with bow, arrows, and 
shield, with the sun setting behind clouds in the 
distance. 



THE WILLING CAPTIVE 

CORTEZ hurried his departure for Mexico 
not merely because he was greedy for gain 
and power and feared the intervention of a jealous 
Cuban governor, but because it had been rumored 
that four Spaniards who had been wrecked on the 
mainland a few years before were held in slavery 
by the natives and compelled to suffer at the hands 
of their dusky masters. As soon as the conquerors 
had secured an interpreter and had gained the con- 
fidence of the districts they intended to pillage, in- 
quiries were set afoot respecting the white cast- 
aways, and rewards of trinkets and friendship were 
offered for their safe conduct to Vera Cruz. Their 
captors, a tribe living southward from this port, 
wanted the trinkets, and presently appeared, bring- 
ing with them the four adventurers, who were well 
and hearty, in no wise the worse for their experi- 
ence. Cortez distributed a few beads and bits of 
metal to the natives, and cordially welcomed his 
countrymen, promising ample gains to them if 
266 



J 



Beyond Our Borders 

they would follow him, and hinting at punishment 
of the people with whom they had been living ; 
but this latter offer was refused by the ** slaves," 
who declared that the Indians had done no injury 
to them. When the time came for the return of 
the native company to their villages, one of the 
four men, who had been growing thoughtful and 
reserved, arose and prepared to go back with them. 
" How's this ?" asked Cortez. *^ Have you left 
something with these people, Alvarez ?" 
'* Yes," answered the man. *' My heart." 
A shout of incredulous laughter went up from 
the troop at this. 

*' I beg you, captain and gentlemen, forgive me 
if I have something lost the fashion of nice speech 
in my five or six years with the natives, but let me 
tell you that you misprise some of the noblest 
attributes in human nature when you set down 
these men as savages. As you may know, sir cap- 
tain, I was a bit of a scholar in Spain, and I came 
here full of contempt for these untaught sons of 
nature. But I soon had to own, with humility, 
that all knowledge is not in books, that all courage 
is not the soldier's courage, best of all, that hap- 
piness and content are not in the far future. I 
have shaped my way of life to that of this race, 
my people henceforth ; not masters, but brothers. 
Warlike and passionate they are when dealing 
with enemies, but peaceful and loving at home. 
How is it with you ? They live up to their laws 
267 



Myths and Legends 

at all times. How is it with you ? They are free 
from all greed of possession and pride of place. 
How is it with you ? You say they are heathen. 
Behind the symbols of their faith they see the same 
truths you affect to worship, and they do not make 
converts with cannon, sword, and rack. They use 
signs and images ? Yes, but what do I see in the 
hands and on the girdles of your priests ? You 
ask me to follow you, to share in the gold you in- 
tend to get, I can guess how. What will gold 
do for me ? It will make toys for my children : 
nothing more. For I have taken a wife from 
among this people, and with them I cast my lot. 
You will risk life, health, some of you will risk 
honor, for the treasure of the Aztecs. I will keep 
life, health, and honor, for my treasure is won. 
Adieu." And, with a bow to Cortez, Alvarez 
beckoned to his Indians and strode away into the 
forest. 



THE DEATH-DANCE OF TEZCATLI- 
POCA 

TEZCATLIPOCA, the Mephistopheles and 
Hercules of Mexican mythology, wanted to 
gain power over the Toltecs, or, if he failed in 
that, to destroy them, and to this end he sought an 
alliance with the daughter of Vemac, their king. 
He put on his best appearance, and not much else, 
for though he could change his form he chose to 
268 



Beyond Our Borders 

enter Tula as a naked boor from the hills, peddling 
green peppers. Looking over the market-place, 
the girl saw the fellow, and in spite of his low 
trade and apparent poverty her heart went out to 
him, for he was tall and strong and handsome. 
King Vemac noticed presently that the girl had 
grown sickly and silent, and he asked her maids 
what ailed her. They were obliged to tell him 
that she suffered for love of a peddler who called 
himself Toveyo, and was like to die if he refused 
her love. At that the king sent a crier to the 
echoing mount of Tzatzitepec, calling on Toveyo 
to show himself at the palace. Days passed, and 
the people sought eagerly in every part of the 
province, for the life of the princess was in peril, 
so sick was she for love. They had no success, 
and great was the surprise of all when the man 
appeared in the market-place with a fresh lot of 
peppers for sale. The king sought him at once. 
** Where do you belong ?" he asked. 

** I am a foreigner," quoth the peddler. 

" Why do you come here without a blanket, and 
with not even breeches to cover you ?" 

*' Such things are not the custom in my land." 

'* Then come with me and you shall be clothed, 
for my daughter perishes of love for you, and you 
must cure her." 

*^ I am not worthy to meet the daughter of a 
king, nor even to hear your words. Let me rather 
die, for I am humble and poor." 
269 



Myths and Legends 

But he was bidden to have no fear ; and so they 
took the scamp to the palace, and after he had 
bathed, had his hair cut, and dyed his body hand- 
somely, he was richly dressed and led into the 
presence of the princess, who could not conceal 
her joy, as women commonly think it meet to do 
in the like event, but was quickly won and wedded ; 
and seeing how good a figure was made by this new 
son-in-law, the king was half inclined toward him, 
even though he had been a peddler. But the 
people grumbled, '' Was there not among us all 
a Toltec who could have wedded this princess ? 
Could the king find no husband for her but an 
alien and a huckster who had not even riches 
enough to go in rags ?'* 

These things came to the ears of the king and 
made him fear an estrangement from his people ; 
nor was he truly proud of this Toveyo, who had 
sold peppers under his windows. The Toltecs 
about this time were having one of their usual 
wars with Cacatepec and Coatepec, and the king 
secretly urged his generals to take Toveyo to the 
front with them and lose him. A brigade of 
dwarfs and cripples was organized for Toveyo, and 
on arriving on the field he was placed in an ad- 
vanced post of danger, with instructions to hold it 
while the trained troops led the attack in another 
quarter. After a feint at a charge the Toltecs pre- 
tended to be driven back in panic, leaving Toveyo 
and his invalids to get away as they might, for no- 
270 



Beyond Our Borders 

body waited to see whether they were saved or 
slaughtered. Arrived once more in Tula, the gen- 
erals told the king how they had betrayed his 
son-in-law to presumptive death, and all except the 
princess rejoiced greatly. Presently a cripple came 
hobbling from the front with news. Toveyo had 
beaten the men of Cacatepec and Coatepec, and 
would be back before dark. A good face must be 
put upon the matter. The troops who had run 
away must honor the troops who stayed, and this 
they did with better will than they had felt in 
going to war, for the fellow had courage, though 
he was a vender. So the peddler of green pep- 
pers and his army of knock-knees and hunchbacks 
marched into Tula to the music of flute bands, the 
dancing of maidens, and a brave show of arms, 
shields, and feather dresses. Every man of the 
victorious troop was painted yellow, with his face 
red, and plumes in his hair, for these were the 
signs of success, and the king said to Toveyo, 
*^ Son-in-law, the Toltecs greet you, for you have 
proved brave in the fight and quick in leadership. 
You are worthy to be of us. Therefore enter the 
palace and be at ease." Toveyo saluted and kept 
silence, but he laughed in his heart. 

Soon after he sent a crier to Mount Tzatzitepec 
to call all the people to Tula, to a great dance and 
feast, and they came, a countless throng. Standing 
among them on the plain of Texcalapa, he led the 
dance, marking the time on a drum. Unknown to 
271 



Myths and Legends 

the others, this was a magic drum, and so long as 
he played all must dance. Hour after hour its 
thump sounded above the song, but faster and 
faster. The sweat poured from the leaping com- 
pany, their breath grew thick and short, yet they 
could not stop. Toveyo artfully moved toward 
the ravine of the Texcaltlauco, and the multitude 
followed, blind, bewitched. He broke the stone 
bridge as he crossed it, and, jumping to the oppo- 
site bank, beat his drum still more quickly and 
fiercely. On came the mob, singing, still stepping 
in time to the drum, and he roared in delight as 
they went over the edge into the canon and became 
stones on the ledges below. 

OTHER WILES OF THE EVIL GOD 

TEZCATLIPOCA was not satisfied with the 
mischief he had wrought at Texcalapa. He 
knew the reverence of the people for his enemy, 
the white god, and summoned them all to work in 
the flower-garden which belonged to that kind 
deity, using the disguise of one of their respected 
soldiers when he called them together. While the 
people were bent at their work he passed down 
the line knocking them on the head with a stout 
wooden hoe, and in this he exhibited such a fury 
that all ran away who could, and many were trod- 
den and killed in the panic. He lighted the peak 
of Zacatepec, and the Toltecs nearly died in their 
272 



Beyond Our Borders 

terror. He threw stones upon them in showers, 
and the sight of one great meteor was so appall- 
ing that many of them went mad and ran to the 
blistering hot stone, after it had fallen, as to an 
altar, and were there killed. He turned all pro- 
visions sour, so they could not eat them ; then, 
disguised as an old woman, he roasted maize and 
threw the scent of it to every quarter, until the 
people became delirious with appetite and ran to 
the house in the white god's garden, whence the 
odor came, to beg or buy the food. As each one 
reached the door Tezcatlipoca struck him dead. 
At another time this god sat in the market-place of 
Tula with a dancing manikin in his hand, and the 
gaping multitude so pressed about him to see mira- 
cles that many had their breath squeezed out, while 
others fell and were crushed. Then Tezcatlipoca 
cried, in derision, '* You fools ! Don't you see 
that you are deceived ? You kill each other in- 
stead of killing us!" This angered the company. 
They gathered stones out of the street and killed 
the sorcerer and his manikin. The corpse lay so 
long in the public place that the air was tainted by 
it and the people were sickened, yet none could 
move it. The corpse itself demanded to be cast 
out of the town, and the crier summoned all the 
people to bear a hand. A long rope was tied to 
the neck of the carcass, and the men bent back 
with a will. Snap went the rope, and down 
went the men, who, striking on their heads on the 
18 273 



Myths and Legends 

stones, became as soundly dead as Tezcatlipoca was 
not. Again they hauled, again the rope broke, 
and again several were killed. Then said the 
corpse, '* You need a song. Sing after me." And 
he intoned a verse, which the Toltecs sang in 
unison, pulling together at certain words, just as 
sailors do at the heaviest part of a lift ; and so the 
body was taken out, though not till more lives had 
been lost in the moving. When the survivors 
returned to their homes they could remember 
nothing of all this, for it was as if they had been 
drunk. 



THE AZTEC TANNHAUSER 

THE Venus of Mexico was Tlazoleotl, a god- 
dess of lustrous beauty, who lived in the 
ninth heaven in a garden of many delights, attended 
by little, misshapen people and clowns who danced 
and sang for her and ran with messages. No- 
where else were such sparkling waters, nowhere 
else such glorious flowers, nowhere else such luring 
eyes as hers. She was bold in her amours and 
made others love on whom she cast her spell, for 
if one but touched a blossom in her garden of 
Xochiquetzal he would love constantly. Weaving 
and spinning a gorgeous fabric, she looked earth- 
ward, and on the lonely pillar of rock called 
Tehuehuetl she saw a naked, wasted man. This 
devotee, Yappan, had separated himself from the 
274 



Beyond Our Borders 

world, the flesh, and the eighty-seven devili*, and 
retired to this lonely pinnacle to pray and purify 
himself. The gods set his enemy, Yaotl, to spy 
upon him, to see that he kept his place and his 
intention, and, indeed, he would not look on the 
women whom the gods sent down from time to 
time to tempt him. He began to rise in the esti- 
mation of the watchers in the sky, and they de- 
bated as to how soon he might be translated and 
become as one of them. But Tlazoleotl, angry 
that love and beauty should be spurned, though in 
the desert, cried to the other gods, '* Do not sup- 
pose that your hero can resist my charm. He can- 
not come to heaven yet. His vow is worthless." 
She descended to the rock, unveiled her shining 
form, and said, *' Brother, I am Tlazoleotl. I 
come to comfort you after your weary vigils in this 
place, for I admire your constancy and am sorry 
for your pains." Then the watchful spy was glad, 
for the goddess had conquered, and her lover and 
victim lay on the rock whence she had vanished, 
imploring mercy and beating his breast in self- 
contempt. Yaotl stole upon Yappan, and with a 
slash of his stone axe struck his head from his 
shoulders. The gods turned Yappan into a scor- 
pion, whose forearms are often lifted, praying, and 
he crav/led under the stone where he had dwelt, 
while Yaotl hurried away to the village where the 
pious man's wife lived, led her to the rock on 
which Yappan had perished, told her the story of 
275 



Myths and Legends 

his failure, sin, and death, and while she wept smote 
off her head too. She also became a scorpion 
and joined her husband, and from these two have 
come all the scorpions that hide beneath stones in 
shame and fear. But Yaotl had been too eager in 
his enmity to the fallen saint, and he had no ex- 
cuse for slaying his wife, so the gods turned him 
into a locust, — a food for scorpions. 



HUITZILOPOCHTLI 

AMONG the many gods of the ancients in 
Mexico none had higher estimation than 
Huitzilopochtli, or Vitziliputzli, god of the air and 
god of war. He was born in the city of Tula 
after a miraculous conception. His mother, Coa- 
tilcue, renowned for the uprightness of her life, 
was walking in the temple court when a ball of 
gay feathers fell from the sunlit sky. She caught 
it in her hand and put it into her bosom, intending 
to decorate the altar with it, but at the end of her| 
walk it had disappeared, and she discovered, to her 
astonishment, that she was about to become a 
mother. She already had many children, who 
said that she was dishonored, and they planned to 
kill her; but the unborn god cried to her not toi 
fear, that he would avert the danger and brinj 
renown upon her. And with a war-whoop thatl 
rang through the city he leaped into being, full- 
grown, plumed and painted for battle, a spear anc 
276 



I 



1 



Beyond Our Borders 

shield in his hands. He fell upon his brothers 
and slew them for their meditated cruelty, and 
took the name of Tezahuitl, the Terror. Like 
Moses, he led his people through the wilderness 
for many years, to find the best land for their 
homes. He introduced dress and other comforts, 
made laws, invented ceremonies, and conferred on 
his people the gift of fire. Gigantic statues of 
him were set up in his temple, and to him were 
offered more sacrifices than to any other of the 
deities. It was believed in after-years that the 
devil spoke through his skull — his bones were 
canonized in Tenochtitlan — and ordered these cru- 
elties. Around his temple in the city of Mexico 
were rows of trees joined by rods, rank on rank 
of them. From the feet of the trees nearly to 
their tops these rods were hung with the heads of 
prisoners who had been slain on his altars. When 
they fell to fragments others were put in their 
places. He himself showed in what way he pre- 
ferred his sacrifices, for his priests having offended 
him, he fell upon them in the night, cut them 
open, pulled their hearts out, and this abominable 
method prevailed until the arrival of the Spaniards, 
who did that much of good, at all events : they 
stopped religious murder, their own murders being 
merely those of policy and conquest. Images of 
the war-god were made of dough kneaded by the 
priests with the blood of children, and to such 
images the people thronged with offerings, and 
277 



Myths and Legends 

deemed themselves blessed if they could touch the 
object, even as others struggle to kiss and touch 
holy relics in Italy and New York in our own day. 
In some places an image of this god, made of 
bread, was broken and eaten by the populace every 
year, the women alone being forbidden to eat of 
it. Slaves were bought and fattened for his altars, 
and it is said that human sacrifice began in his 
temples, the first one occurring in the thirteenth or 
fourteenth century. Others say that the first sacri- 
fices were made by the Aztecs while they were 
captives of the Culhuas. They did not dare to 
attack their masters, but they showed their willing- 
ness to shed blood, and revealed a dangerous power 
by falling upon and slaying four captives, ripping 
out their hearts and throwing them into the lap of 
a stone statue of Huitzilopochtli. This frightened 
the Culhuas, and they let them start on their long 
migration. While most of the sacrifices were of cap- 
tives, some were of young men who were solemnly 
slain, after a month or so of liberty and feasting, 
that they might bear messages, complaints, compli- 
ments, and prayers to the gods. But happiest was 
the soldier who died in battle defending his country, 
for he was caught up from the field by the wife of 
Huitzilopochtli and taken to the sun-house that 
stood in the eastern heavens amid gardens of fruit 
and honey-yielding flowers, and wide pastures 
where game abounded. Every morning when the 
sun left his home the translated warriors marched 
278 



Beyond Our Borders 

before him, flourishing their spears, that seemed 
like light-rays, and singing their proud songs of 
battle. 



THE WAR-GOD TAKES A BRIDE 

IT is said that Huitzilopochtli wearied of mere 
punishment sacrifices — the offering of beaten 
armies on his altars — and longed for a fairer gift. 
He was lonely : he wished for a sister, a compan- 
ion, a wife. So he afflicted the earth for a time, 
as a sign of his displeasure and his need, that the 
oracles might tell the inquiring people what to do. 
It may have been a long rain, a drouth, a plague, a 
series of hurricanes ; whatever it was, the populace 
groaned and asked the priests how they might avert 
its continuance, and the priests, inspired by the 
god, bade the Aztec emperor send a princess to 
him. A messenger was despatched to the king of 
the Culhuacans, to beg that he would honor his 
favorite daughter by making her the bride of the 
war-god and sharer of his throne. Flattered and 
frightened, for he had reason to hold the Aztecs, 
as well as the god, in fear, realizing, too, that un- 
less he brought the affliction of the people to a 
quick end they would not be slow to avenge the 
selfishness of his love with the destruction of him- 
self and his family, the king took a tearful farewell 
of his daughter, who in gorgeous robes and flowers 
279 



Myths and Legends 

was escorted to the altar. The pomps having been 
observed and the murder committed, a ceremony 
followed which consisted in the flaying of the vic- 
tim and a public wearing of the skin by the priest 
who had taken the life. With good intention, 
doubtless, but with a refinement of cruelty, the 
Aztec emperor asked the king to attend his girl's 
deification. He entered the temple after the kill- 
ing, for that he could not bear, and was groping 
his way forward in the darkness, when a copal 
torch flashed up and he saw the priest beside Huit- 
zilopochtli's statue, receiving the homage of the 
multitude and dressed in the freshly stripped skin, 
that still bore a ghastly suggestion of the victim. 
The king shuddered and moaned in grief and 
horror and rushed from the place to vent his sor- 
row beneath the stars. The stars ? Yes, there 
was comfort. Was not one of them now his daugh- 
ter ? If only he could know the one ! 

EL DORADO 

EL DORADO (the Gilded) has come to be i 
term signifying a wealthy place, a wealthjl 
land, a paying enterprise. It means nothing of 
the kind, however. It relates to a gilded youth 
and here again tradition justifies a common phrase 
He was a Chibcha chief, who anointed his bodj 
with fragrant gums, and over whom his priests twic 
a day blew gold-dust, through a bamboo. In 153I 
280 



Beyond Our Borders 

three expeditions set out for the conquest of the 
present republic of Colombia : Fredemann's troop, 
from Venezuela ; Quesada's, which ascended the 
Magdalena River ; and Pizarro's, that went up 
from Peru in charge of Benalcazar. Oddly enough, 
they reached the plain of Bogota almost together, 
Fredemann's company arrayed in skins, Quesada's 
dressed like the natives, and Benalcazar's in glitter- 
ing armor, with banners. Quesada had divided 
two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in gold and 
two thousand emeralds among his men before he 
met the others, but none of them had seen El Do- 
rado, from whose coffers they expected to plunder 
gold and gems far in excess of this, and the wealth 
alleged to have been stored in the temple of Suamoz 
was never taken out of its ruins. Its priest fired 
it on the approach of the Spaniards and was crushed 
by the tumbling walls, with him perishing *' the 
traditions of a people and the history of a nation." 
Gold was picked up in other temples, and to this 
day is found in ancient graves. Ornaments and 
images of the metal have been discovered in the 
sabana, the lagoons of which are thought to have 
been held sacred. Their sanctity may have arisen 
from some tradition of the tremendous cataclysm 
by which the great lake that once filled this valley 
was drained through the gorge of the Tequendama. 
With the lowering of the waters were revealed the 
gold-bearing ledges and gravels that furnished to 
the Indians a wealth abundant and unprized. 
281 



Myths and Legends 

El Dorado ruled in Manoa, a city that may have 
been some other than the predecessor of Bogota, 
On state occasions he showed himself to his peo- . 
pie all shining with gold, and threw metals, emer- 
alds, and such gifts into a sacred lake, where he 
bathed presently. In addition to the three ex- 
peditions named, others essayed the mountain 
country in various directions, and, while El Do- 
rado eluded them, considerable geography was 
added to the world's meagre store of that science. 
Orellana declared that he found El Dorado in a 
voyage down the Amazon in 1540, but he didn't. 
He may not have been a wilful liar, however, be- 
cause the practice alleged of the Colombian natives 
may have been followed elsewhere, and may, in- 
deed, be the source of the El Dorado story. It 
was that of anointing and gilding a chief on a cer- 
tain festival, the gilded one personifying the sun. 
It is a wee bit unlikely that any man could endure 
to be gummed and gold-plated for any length of 
time. The clogging of his skin-pores would at 
least injure his complexion. It is related of a boy 
who was gilded and carried in a religious proces- 
sion, to represent the infant Christ eiFulgent, that 
he died in a few hours, because he could not per- 
spire. The Spaniards never thought upon these 
matters. They were willing to perspire, some, 
themselves if they could only get the gold that 
had been won by the sweat of other people. 



282 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE DWARF'S HOUSE 

UXMAL has three famous ruins, the palace 
of Las Monjas, the Governor's House, and 
the Dwarf's House, which are monuments of an 
extinct civilization, and remarkable for the sound- 
ness of the masonry and the richness of their deco- 
ration. The Dwarf's House crowns a steep mound 
a hundred feet high. It contains three rooms deco- 
rated with masonic symbols, with an elephant's 
head above the entrance. A curtain formerly con- 
cealed the rites and tragedies enacted within. Its 
story is this : The son of a famous witch was a 
favorite among the people, although he was a mere 
dwarf in size. They courted him, because they 
feared his mother. The gifts and flattery lavished 
on this little creature excited the jealousy of the 
king, who, pretending kindness, took him into his 
family and by gradually increasing honors that in- 
volved the doing of much work he hoped to ex- 
haust the boy and bring him into contempt for 
disobedience, that he might punish him with death. 
But with the help of his mother the boy always 
managed to do what was required of him. At last 
the king ordered him to build a mound and a house 
on its top in a single night. He ran home, crying, 
" Mother, I am dead. This task is beyond me." 
And he told her what he had been commanded to do. 
" Do not be troubled," answered the sorceress. 
** All will be well in the morning." 
^^5 



Myths and Legends 

Sure enough, there stood the mound and the 
house at sunrise. Though secretly enraged, the 
king thanked the dwarf and expressed his pleasure 
in the work. *^ And now," said he, *' I give you 
my daughter in marriage. Only, it will be a con- 
dition that I first break six cocoyoles on your head." 

** But I don't wish to marry, and I am not so 
vain or ambitious as to expect to wed into the fam- 
ily of a king. As to the nuts, I know that coco- 
yoles are very hard, and while my skull is as thick as 
some others, I doubt if it will stand the thumping." 

*' Pah ! A mere ceremony. Surely a princess 
is worth a twinge." 

The dwarf ran back to his mother. ** He will 
surely kill me now," he said ; and he told of his 
fresh misfortune. 

*' Go back and tell the king that you will let him 
break the nuts against your head if, afterward, he 
will let you break the same number against his." 

The dwarf asked if this agreement would please 
his majesty, and the king laughed his wilhngness. 
He intended to kill the dwarf at the first blow. 
But the witch had rubbed a magic ointment on her 
son's head, so that it was like iron, and though the 
king broke all six of the cocoyoles over his head, 
the youth did not even wink. Greatly disappointed 
and much astonished, the king pretended to con- 
gratulate the dwarf on his courage and the firmness 
of his bones. Then, with some misgivings, he 
placed his own head on the earth, to undergo the 
284 



Beyond Our Borders 

same test. He did not survive it. The first blow 
smashed the cocoyol, but also cracked the monarch's 
pate. The test had been fair. The dwarf had 
proved himself the stouter of the two. So the 
populace buried the king and placed the dwarf on 
his throne, while his marriage to the princess was 
celebrated with great splendor. 

WHY VALDEZ BOUGHT PRAYERS 

BEFORE the railroad days Juan Valdez was 
the engineer of a mule-train that plied be- 
tween Monterey and Guadalajara. It was rough 
travel, with steep grades, and, with to-morrow 
always ahead of one, why should a freighter ex- 
pect to cover more than four or five miles in a 
day ? Coming o' this easy fashion to Saltillo, on 
one journey, Valdez went to the cathedral to give 
thanks that he had, so far, been preserved from 
brigands and broken harness, and perhaps to pray 
in secret that he might have a few worthy temp- 
tations thrown in his way during the next week. 
Returning toward his wagons in the light of a 
young moon, he passed an old adobe house, large, 
though a single story high, whose ruin was so par- 
ticularly mournful that he paused before it and 
waited to hear a night-bird's call, as if he were 
sure it would come out of the rank trees that had 
grown up in the patio and leaned over the skeleton 
roof. There was no hurry, so he loitered about 
285 



Myths and Legends 

the place, held by a sort of fascination, and finally 
entered the court, stirring dust out of the rotting 
timbers that he kicked, evolving melancholy smells 
of decay, and bringing at last the startling quaver 
that he had expected from the trees, — a bird's pro- 
test. Over an old well in the middle of the patio 
dangled a rope, svi^inging in the breeze. Pshaw ! 
It was too saddening. He would go up to the 
plaza where all the people were, and hear the 
band play. Yet — look ! He is not alone. 

In a little space of light, so phosphorescent that 
he seems to carry it, stands a child, looking from 
the door of the hall. It is a poor, misshapen 
little thing, hump-backed, hollow-chested, with 
one short leg, and it holds its hands out to feel its 
way, as though its eyes were poor. Great, sad 
eyes they are, and the face is that of a being who 
has never known love or tenderness. Valdez's 
heart goes out to it. With a simple gesture the 
boy beckons to the teamster and limps through a 
gap in what had been the stable, as if expecting 
the man to follow. This he does, for his curiosity 
is now keen, though he stops to mutter an ave 
when the boy swings open a rickety door and de- 
scends into a cellar, — an unusual adjunct of a 
Mexican house. But it is not a cellar : it is a 
vault, through which flows the water that supplies 
the well. Where the light comes from now 
Valdez does not know ; yet there is light in the 
place, at least enough to see that two other figures 
286 



Beyond Our Borders 

have come down the stair behind him. He can 
hear his own heart going like a hammer. Why 
has he been lured down here ? The two others 
have not seen him, and he stands breathless. The 
boy is looking into the water and has not seen 
them either. Heaven ! What creatures ! One 
is a man with a purple face and a neck marked by 
a rope. His head swings loosely on his shoulders, 
as if he could not raise it. The other is a woman 
with streaks of blue in her flesh. Corruption has 
set in. Both look with hate at the child, then smile 
meaningly. They steal forward. The woman 
clutches the boy. The man pulls out a knife. 
Once — twice — it falls. A splash is heard. The 
two exchange a look, half fright, half joy. Then 
it is very dark. Nearly crazed with terror, Valdez 
stumbles up the stairs, rips and crashes through the 
weeds and rotting beams, and regains the quiet 
street. Pistol in hand, he waits to see if he is 
followed. No : it is all still in there. He goes 
back to the cathedral, rouses a sleepy priest, and 
counts a dozen silver reals into his hand. *' Pray 
out of purgatory," he says, *' the soul of a little 
cripple who has been murdered by his parents." 

" In this city ?" 
P "In this city." 

*' When ?" 

*' Alas, father, I cannot tell. Perhaps it was years 
ago. But I saw the murder done — to-night." 



ft 



287 



I 



Myths and Legends 

FATHER JOSE'S LOVE 

FIERCE troubles came upon New Spain as the 
seventeenth century was drawing to its end, 
and the stout old soldier, Diego de Vargas, was 
hurried north to crush the Pueblos in their strong- 
holds. As lieutenant he took his son, Jose, despite 
the setting of the march for the very day whereon 
the young man was to have married Dona Ana de 
Ornate. The sadness of the parting was softened, 
so much as might be, by assurances that the troops 
would soon return, and who knew but they might 
bring some of the wealth of Cibola with them ? 
In that event the Dona Ana should be jewelled like 
a queen, should live in the fairest hacienda in 
Mexico, should have slaves and servants, and a 
gilded carriage ; yes, if she chose, she should live 
in old Spain and ruffle it with the proudest of 
the old families. And so, watched through tear- 
dimmed eyes, the troop set off. 

The Indians were not so easily put down. They 
were fighting for their homes, their religion, their 
lives, and they fought well. Nearly two years 
passed before the army went back to Mexico City, 
worn, broken, sadly less in numbers. They had 
beaten the red men, but it had cost many lives and 
two human hearts to do it, for on a report that 
Jose had been killed in battle Ana had withdrawn 
to a convent ; and finding that he was thus de- 
serted, Jose cursed the church and its priests who 
288 



Beyond Our Borders 

had robbed him of his treasure. In a cooler hour 
he repented this frenzy. He begged and received 
comfort from the blessed Saint Francis, who ap- 
peared to him' in a dream, promising forgiveness if 
he, too, would live the religious life. The world 
held nothing for him longer:' he became a monk, 
asking only that the bishop would send him away 
from a city where the sight of familiar objects kept 
memory alive to torture him. So he was ordered to 
the Franciscan monastery in Monterey, there to en- 
lighten and gospel the heathen, to care for the sick, 
to teach useful arts, and all this he did, softened 
by a sincerity of repentance for his blasphemy and 
thankfulness that it had been forgiven. Though he 
had been a soldier and had tasted wild, free life, his 
bent was toward books and gentle things, and — he 
could not deny it — toward the memory of that fairest 
of beings, the Doiia Ana. He could pray her image 
out of his mind in chapel, but in hi& dreams he was 
not his own master, and neither prayers, fasts, nor 
penances could prevent the rising of that vision, 
pale, appealing, yes, seductive, at his bedside. 

Returning on a hot day toward the monastery 
from the chapel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where 
he had just said mass for a company of stolid In- 
dians, Father Jose — he kept his worldly name — 
drooped to the ground in the shade of the palms 
that grow below the chapel, and thought and suf- 
fered. Before him lay a tiny pakn that some way- 
farer had carelessly plucked up and tossed upon 
ig 289 



Myths and Legends 

the ground, and as carelessly he took it up and 
switched the dusty earth with it ; yet, somehow, 
his compassion was moved for its thwarted life : it 
recalled his own ; he would befriend it. Plunging 
it into an irrigating canal that flowed lazily and 
turbidly past him, he washed it free of dust and 
felt something of life stir in the wilted leaves and 
stem. Then, packing it in moss, he walked to the 
town more hurriedly than usual, and planted the 
little thing in the garden, where he could see it 
from his cell. He tended it as palms are seldom 
tended in that country, loosening the earth at its 
roots when it became hard, freeing it from scale 
and insects, picking off dead leaves, watering it in 
the dry season, and shortly it dawned upon him 
that the love he could not give to a woman he was 
bestowing on a tree. Perhaps in its grace, its 
beauty, its uncertainty, it reminded him of a 
woman, and he felt that as it owed its life and 
strength to his care, it had a love for him. It 
grew prodigiously and was most fair to look on, — 
as you may see, when you visit Monterey, — and 
sitting in its shadow, his arm about the trunk, he 
was nearer to content. 

As the tree gained in beauty he increased in age. 
His face was sad and pale, and lines were cutting 
themselves upon it. Then came the fever, the 
dreaded typhus, and townsmen, monks, soldiers, 
Indians, were struck down as in a battle. He 
attended them constantly, ministering to the sick, 
290 



Beyond Our Borders 

praying for the dying. Every house was a hos- 
pital, and for the first time the Capuchina nuns 
were released, and went into the town to give 
comfort to the tortured and the perishing, — a 
breach of vow for which they readily gained abso- 
lution from Rome. Worn with his work, Jose 
caught the fever too, and at its height he had 
dragged himself to his cell to die. Knowing that 
his end was near, he begged the brothers to carry 
him to his palm-tree and so leave him. He leaned 
against it and watched the great peaks in the west, 
toward which the sun was sinking as fast as his own 
life ebbed ; but it was sweet to end the world like 
that ; to fade like the day ; to see beauty to the 
last. He started. His pulse leaped wildly. A 
woman was coming up the path, a Capuchina. 
Their eyes met. With a little sob and cry the 
woman sank to her knees and wet his hand with 
her tears. It was Dona Ana. For an hour they 
were together, calm, after the first agitation had 
passed, their hands clasped, his voice growing 
fainter, her face more saintly resigned. Now the 
sun was down. A wan smile struggled over the 
man's lips ; a breeze shook the palm-leaves over- 
head, and he raised his eyes to the golden glory in 
the sky. Palm-leaves ? They used to betoken 
victory. The Angelus rang out, musical and sil- 
very, and a star trembled like a tear on the brow 
of Mitra. It was an hour of peace. Father 
Jose's long unhappiness was over. 
291 



Myths and Legends 

THE DEVIL IN PRISON 

TO Ojinaja, on the Rio Grande, came a 
Spanish priest in some forgotten year of 
the eighteenth century, and set up his abode there 
among the Indians. He taught Christianity, which 
the people were slow to accept, and he sensibly 
avoided any attempt to force his religion on them, 
preferring to show in his own life the advantages 
that enlightened people enjoyed over savages. In 
time his good offices had so won their confidence 
that he gained a sort of chieftaincy among them, 
yet they clung to their old beliefs and secretly 
wearied him with their unreasonable superstitions. 
At length a visitor arrived in Ojinaja who com- 
pletely changed the aspect of affairs in that village, 
and converted every Indian to the true faith over- 
night. That visitor was the devil. 

The good father had left his house and gone up 
the valley for his evening meditations, and had been 
absent for a couple of hours, when he came run- 
ning back to the Indians, crying that he had seen 
the devil, had chased him up the side of a mountain, 
and had shut him up in a cave on the summit. He 
had chanced to look up, he told them, and was 
astonished to see that the valley had been spanned 
by an immense chain, hung from one mountain to 
its opposite, and that a fierce-looking creature was 
seated in the sag of it, swinging in a way to make 
one's head swim, for he flew a mile back and forth 

2Q2 



Beyond Our Borders 

at every rise and fall. Realizing that this could be 
none other than the devil, the priest plucked his 
cross from a fold of his robe and held it toward the 
evil one ; for there is nothing that so affrights the 
fiend as the holy cross. And, truly, no sooner 
had he seen it than, with a howl of dismay, he 
ceased his sport and scrambled along the chain to 
one of its holds, tugged at it until the ends gave 
way, and fled up the height, dragging the two or 
three hundred tons of iron after him with a pro- 
digious rattling. 

The priest was close upon him, still holding the 
cross on high, when the devil, in a final effort at 
escape, rushed into the cave, still drawing his 
chain. As it was disappearing the pursuer touched 
it with his cross and the last link fell off. Then, 
with a cry of joy that he had so easily overcome 
the fiend, he planted the cross at the cave's mouth, 
thus making him prisoner, if not forever, at least so 
long as the emblem should be kept whole, and re- 
placed when it decayed. Yet, to make more sure, 
he would have the people build a chapel there, and 
he asked them to follow him to the mountain-top, 
that they might know his story to be true. Keep- 
ing close together, with some fondness for being 
in the rear, the Ojinajans made the ascent, and 
were struck into a great trepidation when they 
heard the undoubted clank of metal within the 
cave. The priest bade them be of courage, to 
embrace the faith immediately, and help him to 
293 



Myths and Legends 

erect a shrine before the cavern that should secure 
them against further evil. This they did, and the 
chapel still stands on the peak of Ojinaja. The 
missing link from the devil's chain is preserved 
there among its relics, and every year, on the night 
of January 25, the natives climb to the little 
church, give thanks to God for their preservation, 
and feed bonfires on both sides of the valley, to 
express their joy in this escape. 

THE ALLIGATOR-TREE. 

WHAT the English call the alligator-tree, 
that grovsrs on the Tehuantepec isthmus, 
is known to the natives as the ** alligator's tail." 
It affords a v^ood that promises to be of value in 
the building arts, and its rough, thorny bark sug- 
gests the skin of the lizard whose name it takes. 
In days of old the alligator was more respected 
than now, but for a different reason. It was be- 
cause he was wise. He was represented in stone, 
clay, and wood, was painted on walls, and princes 
bowed before him. He became vastly proud of 
this distinction, and began to put on airs about it. 
Among the beliefs in his family was that of its 
need to live among the rivers. Salt water and 
cold water meant death. But the younger mem- 
bers of the tribe were discontented. They sniffed 
at the axioms of the fathers, and scorned the notion 
that they were to stay in one country forever. 
294 



Beyond Our Borders 

They would travel and learn. They had heard 
men talking of the land beyond the mountains, 
where great cities were, of a sea that spread to the 
world's edge, of alligators larger and wiser than 
those of the Gulf side ; so they held a meeting in 
the deepest and darkest forest on the Coatzacoalcos 
River and derided their elders for superstitious old 
fossils, and resolved to be at least as free as men 
were. '* Those queer little creatures, with only 
two legs, thin skins, and no teeth to speak of, who 
cannot stay a minute under water, nor go for two 
days without food — they travel where they like, 
and why, therefore, should not we ? Their gods 
are surely their betters, and the whole earth should 
be ours." 

This speech, by one of the party, was instantly 
approved, and soon after a crowd of young alli- 
gators, several hundred in number, began the 
passage of the mountains. They ascended the 
Coatzacoalcos through the night, coming into an 
open country near the hills just as the sun was 
rising. Great was the surprise of all to find that 
the river was coming to an end, for they had sup- 
posed that they could cross to the Pacific without 
walking on dry ground. What excited their alarm, 
also, was the chill. The water grew so cold as 
they ascended that they could finally bear it no 
longer, but climbed upon the bank, where the sun 
fell warm upon them, and fell asleep. At nightfall 
came a god of the hills. *' What are these mon- 
295 



Myths and Legends 

sters doing in my qountry ?" he cried. '* Have I 
not warned all creatures of the coast to keep to 
their own kingdom ? Up with you, spirits of the 
springs, and help me to punish these fellows." 

Then came the water elves capering down the 
hill-sides, curling and fawning about his feet, 
making a gurgling laughter as they thought of the 
surprise in store for the alligators. They whirled 
about and about until each had bored a hole two or 
three feet deep in the earth ; then they seized the 
sleeping reptiles, and plunged them, head first, into 
the holes, with their tails in the air, and there they 
are, at the edge of the tierra templada^ to this day. 
One alligator, who had hidden in the wood when 
the water sprites came down, escaped and swam 
down the river to his old home, where he told the 
sorrowing parents of the fate that had come upon 
the youngsters in punishment of their rashness, and 
the elders mourned, but vainly. Never since then 
have the alligators tried their fortunes out of the 
warm coast lands and waters. 

EVIL SPIRITS IN THE SPRINGS 

ATZCAPOTZALCO, near Mexico City, is 
renowned for two springs and somewhat 
feared because of them. The first, near the ruined 
Zancopinca aqueduct, is an innocent-looking pond 
of sweet water; but beware, especially if you 
hear singing ; for down beneath it is the palace of 
296 



Beyond Our Borders 

rock-crystal where the dreaded Malinche lives 
during a half of each day. During the other half 
she is in her spring at Chapultepec. Forbidding, 
even fiendish, in her disposition in Atzcapotzalco, 
she is angelic in Chapultepec. This is probably 
because she adheres to the old gods of the nation 
that linger about the battle hill, while the nearness 
of Christian shrines and blessings in the other 
home arouses every fell instinct in her nature. 
She spends her days in Chapultepec and her nights 
in the Zancopinca pool. At early morning and 
in the evening she sings, and her voice bubbles 
through the cool, clear flood in wondrous melody. 
Christian, if you are one, be careful as you ap- 
proach the edge. 'Doyrfi there the moving reflec- 
tions of the sky revive themselves into a lovely 
form, a face with star eyes, hair like the finest 
water moss. Put your hands upon your ears, hurry 
oiF and say your prayers ; for if you stay the song 
will dull your sense like wine, a languor will en- 
chain you and delude you with dreams. You will 
bend over farther and farther, the face will smile 
up at you, the graceful arms invite you, the buried 
treasure of Guatamotzin, that Cortez could not 
win, though he put its owner on the rack, will 
glitter behind the figure, and it is all yours, nymph, 
palace, treasure, all. You plunge forward. The 
arms enfold you, and it grows dark. Christian in- 
truder in the Aztec land, have you won joy, or 
death ? 

297 



Myths and Legends 

In another direction you come upon a grove of 
large ahuehuetes surrounding a space where a fount 
once brimmed its basin, — brimmed, and never over- 
flowed. It was so cool and pure, that spring, that 
in the warmth of mid-day the stranger coming 
upon it was moved to fall to his knees, bury his 
face below the surface and cool his dry throat with 
a long draught. Hapless mortal if he did so, for this 
spot, too, was inhabited by a spirit as dangerous as 
the Malinche, and at the first sip the drinker dis- 
appeared, nor ever again returned to the air in the 
sight of men. One day a procession of priests 
emerged from the church, not far away, carrying 
the Virgin's image and chanting solemnly. They 
walked up the road as far as the spring, set up an 
altar for the statue beside it, one of their number 
mounted its step and preached against the wicked- 
ness of the water sprite, then all threw in stones 
and earth until the basin was filled, and a chapel 
was presently built above it to keep the water 
down. In time the chapel crumbled away, and 
the spring may yet be free again ; for, if you listen, 
you may hear it, deep down, laughing softly to 
itself. It is as much alive as ever, and who 
knows ? 



298 



Beyond Our Borders 

DEVILS AND DOUBLOONS 

DEVILS and doubloons have been perplexingly 
associated for more than two centuries among 
the West Indies and neighboring coasts. Often 
the devils guarded the doubloons out of fondness 
for the pirates who had hidden them, and some- 
times the pirates were pretty good imitations of 
devils themselves. Wherever there is wealth sin 
is not far. The love of money is a root of several 
evils. How many shaggy creatures have been 
marooned on the sand keys from the Carolinas 
southward, how many have been killed there in 
wrangles over the division of treasure, and how 
much treasure was unearthed during the absence of 
its winners in distant ports, can never be guessed, 
but the memory of these crimes and burials haunts 
thousands of miles of shore. Very likely it was 
the discovery of so strange a race as the Indians 
that forced the first explorers into a belief that the 
New World was filled with devils, yet even remote 
and lonely places, without mortal inhabitants, were 
so peopled. The Bermudas, for example, were 
regarded as inaccessible, darkened by terrors, and 
were known as the Devils' Islands. They be- 
longed to Ferdinand Camelo, a Portuguese, who 
merely put his initials on a cliiF, together with a 
cross, the one to keep the English off, the other to 
frighten away the imps. He may have succeeded 
with the imps, but an English ship went ashore on 
299 



Myths and Legends 

one of Camelo's islands, and — well, pretty soon 
the English owned them all. 

To our own day strange things inhabit the tropi- 
cal belt of the Westejn world. Jamaica Jias its 
'* duppies" and *' rolling calves," that prank around 
in the night, pestering poor negroes. Porto Rico 
was one of the islands on which the prophecy was 
given, before the coming of Columbus, of /* ruin 
and desolation by the arrival of strangers, com- 
pletely clad, and armed with the lightning of 
heaven." Days were set for solemn dances and 
lamentations, in a hope of deferring the dreadful 
time, and these ceremonies lasted into the years of 
white ownership, for other devils than the white 
ones had also been discovered. Mugeres Island, 
off British Honduras, has had its devils in the 
flesh and out of it, for it has a typical buried- 
treasure story : Pirates went ashore there in the 
last century with the sack of a coast town, includ- 
ing coin, communion cups, and bishop's jewels, 
which they had sealed in large lead boxes. These 
chests were lowered into a pit at the north end of 
the island, sixty steps from water, and covered 
with tarpaulin. The captain asked for volunteers 
to guard them, and two negroes of the crew stepped 
forward, thinking to live there pleasantly, without 
work, and perchance to rob the robbers as soon as 
the ship was out of sight. Mistaken fellows ! 
They did not know the traditions of their trade. 
The captain pulled out his pistols and shot them 
300 



Beyond Our Borders 

dead. Their bodies were thrown upon the tar- 
paulin, then covered with sand, the captain saying 
that they would care for the treasure better dead 
than alive, for their ghosts would drive away in- 
truders, and, beside, any one finding bones would 
dig no farther. This treasure can be taken up 
only by the one for whom fate intends it. The 
watchful, jealous people of the island, who still 
hope to find it themselves, say they will kill any 
other. Do you wish to try your luck ? 

INCIDENTS OF WAR 

IN reading the history of South America it 
seems as if its normal state for three cen- 
turies had been that of war. Originally the peo- 
ple were lovers of peace. Such were the thirty 
million Inca Indians to whom Manco Capac, son 
of the Sun, preached gentleness and justice on the 
bank of Lake Titicaca, for whom he built roads 
like those of the Romans, one of them extending 
^- from Cuzco to Quito, almost two thousand miles, 
and for whom he erected a temple of the sun with 
its roof of seven hundred gold plates, each of them 
a burden for four men. Among these people — the 
first successful communists — Pizarro and his Span- 
iards wrought havoc. Though teaching Chris- 
tianity and promising rewards after death for an 
intolerable patience in this life, the invaders were 
false to every tenet of their own faith, for they 
301 



Myths and Legends 

robbed, enslaved, tortured, and slew the natives, and 
showed them easy ways to self-destruction through 
sins and vices. Greatest of these vices was war. 
Uneducated, priest-ridden, swindled, and oppressed, 
the people arose from time to time, yet never won 
a real or lasting liberty. The arts found meagre 
expression, industries never became important, 
road-building lapsed into a forgotten art, and caste, 
implanted by the Spaniards, was inherited by the 
republics. Revolutions were not accomplished by 
votes, but by the sword. The idol of one decade 
was in the next the prisoner, the fugitive, the sui- 
cide. Victories were celebrated by pillage and 
massacre. The policy toward the purely Indian 
tribes was destructive. When Mendoza marched 
against the Araucanians — those fierce soldiers, who 
took nightly courage from the heavens, for they be- 
lieved that the stars were their dead but still con- 
quering brothers — he defeated, but could never 
subdue them. He gathered a large company of 
these Indians into his fort by making them believe 
his men to be asleep and at their mercy ; then, 
closing his gates, he fell upon and killed them 
every one. Their chief, Caupolican, being cap- 
tured alive, was solemnly and benignantly baptized, 
then flung upon sharp spikes and there allowed to 
die. 

Barbarous, inexcusable as many of these wars 
have been, they seem to have tended toward a 
higher liberty and a sounder, if more boastful, na- 
302 



Beyond Our Borders 

tional strength. They have developed heroes and 
heroic attributes, and they have abolished crov^ns 
from the Western hemisphere. Among the inci- 
dents of battle that one contemplates v^^ith a more 
admiring disposition than is inspired by the usual 
savagery is the exploit of General Pringle at Chan- 
cai. The war for Peruvian liberation was desper- 
ately waged, and no fighters were more stern than 
the troops from the Argentine, some.of them of Eng- 
lish descent, who had climbed over the Andes and 
come up from the Chilian cities in ships to engage 
the Spaniards. At Chancai, where the rebel army 
was outnumbered ten to one, the defeat was total, 
yet the battle was fought so stoutly that of all the 
Argentines but three were left uncaptured and un- 
hurt. One of these was Pringle, who, crying to 
his companions, '* We will not be taken ; follow 
me !" rode along the sea-wall until he reached deep 
water, then leaped in, heading the horses toward 
a beach. The click of locks sounded along the 
Spanish line, and fifty muskets covered them ; but 
before trigger could be drawn, the Spanish general, 
Alvarado, cried to his men, *' Stop ! Not another 
shot ! These men are soldiers worthy the name. 
Their courage shall be respected." Then, calling 
to the horsemen, he told them they might return 
in safety and leave the field unchallenged. The 
Argentines gained a landing-place, and, with a salute 
and a cheer on either side, they dashed away. 
They had gained a victory in defeat. 
303 



Myths and Legends 

GAMBLING AWAY THE SUN 

THE disk of solid gold that represented the 
sun in the temple of Cuzco fell to one of 
Pizarro's scallawags, Mancio Sierra Lejesama, in a 
division of Peruvian spoil. It could be melted 
into doubloons enough to keep the wight in wine 
and bad company for ten years, if he could prevent 
his throat from being slit that long, and for a while 
he seriously thought of cutting away from his ruf- 
fling associates and returning to Spain to enjoy life 
as a guzzling libertine, and possibly to wear a title. 
But his old ways were too strong upon him. He 
had been a gambler, and a gambler he was still. 
Could he play but one more winning game and 
get some of his comrades' cups and rings away 
from them, there was no doubt that he would be 
able to live without work for the rest of his life. 
** Come, gentlemen," he cried, *' I am going to 
give you the greatest chance you ever had. This 
time it is no beggarly handful of yellow boys we'll 
toss the cards for, but the great sun of Peru itself. 
We will play for the biggest stake in history." 
The game was long and earnest. Lejesama lost. 
He arose from the table silent, crushed, convinced 
as never before of his own folly. The gold was 
gone, but he brought out of his meditations what 
was better, a chastened spirit. He abandoned 
stealing and gaming, took an Inca's daughter to 
wife, worked for the welfare of the people he had 
304 



Beyond Our Borders 

injured, and left behind him, as a token of his re- 
form, a history of and tribute to the Peruvians. 
One of his sayings lives in Spain to this day. It 
is, *' He plays the sun away before it rises." This 
means that a person is an incurable spendthrift. 



HUASCAR'S PROPHECY 

YEARS had gone by since Huanya Capac, last 
of the Incas, had donned the jewelled sash 
and lifted the rainbow banner of kingship. The 
festivities attending his enthronement lasted for 
many days, and included many dances in the Garden 
of Delights at Yucay, a dozen miles from Cuzco, 
where sacred birds were kept among flowers of 
gold and silver plate and leaves of emerald, where 
nobles bathed in tubs of gold, and where dancing- 
girls went before the Inca, strewing fresh blos- 
soms for his sandalled feet. Peace and plenty were 
in the land, but their end was near, for Pizarro 
and his prayer-pattering rapscallions were on their 
way toward the new world. Huanya Capac had 
marched to Quito, — the city where the invading 
Caras, descending the River of the Emeralds in 
the year looo, had built great temples to the sun 
and moon, the one with its disk of gold flashing 
reflections on the priests, the other with its plaque 
of silver that repeated the beams of the rising 
moon; Here the last of the Incas worshipped, and 
here the people worshipped him. At the end of 
20 305 



I 



Myths and Legends 

his reign he left the empire, not to the true heir, 
Huascar, but to him jointly with his brother, 
Atahualpa. It was soon evident that no throne is 
large enough for two. The brothers quarrelled, 
and Atahualpa, being the stronger and more am- 
bitious, soon gained the ascendency over Huascar, 
who was a man of gentle nature. Then came the 
Spaniards, who robbed the Incas of everything 
except their title, which they would allow only 
one of them to wear. The wicked brother saw 
that the kingship was slipping from his grasp. He 
resolved to hold it at the cost of crime. His re- 
tainers seized Huascar and drowned him in the 
Andamarca. Before he was cast into the river 
Huascar cried to his tyrant brother, who stood 
scowling on the bank, *^ What you do to me the 
white man will do to you. He will soon avenge 
me." 

Not long afterward Pizarro had imprisoned 
Atahualpa, in spite of his many friendly services. 
*' Let me go," begged the king, ^* and I will cover 
the floor of this cell with gold." 

Pizarro shook his head. 

** Let me go, and I will fill this cell with golden 
vessels, as high as I can reach." 

'* That is well. You shall have your liberty 
when your people have brought the gold." 

It took a long time to collect such a quantity of 
treasure. Pizarro took it as fast as it came in ; 
then, alleging that his prisoner had plotted against 
306 



Beyond Our Borders 

him, he condemned him to die at the stake in the 
square of Caxamalca. As a concession to morality, 
the victim was urged to become a Christian, and 
as a reward for changing his faith was told that he 
might enjoy a death by strangling instead of burn- 
ing. The Inca allowed himself to be baptized, 
and after passing from the hands of the priests to 
those of the garroter he became a public show in 
death. Then a requiem mass was sung for him. 
During the service the people rushed into the 
church, that they might be killed at his side by the 
Spaniards, and so reach the sun in his company. 
But death was waiting for a third one of the actors 
in this tragedy, and it came swiftly. Jealous of 
the master thief, some of his followers broke into 
the house of Pizarro, and although he mortally 
wounded one, he had his own quietus at the in- 
stant. With finger dipped in his own blood the 
bravo wrote the word ** Jesus" on the floor, and 
died as he tried to kiss it. Not one human being 
remained in that house to mourn. 



THE MEDAL AND THE ORCHID 

THOSE who have lived among the natives of 
South America say that they are a finer 
people, morally and mentally, than their northern 
cousins. Their life is under less stress, therefore 
less heroic, than that of the Sioux and others who 
obtain their subsistence by the hunt on the wide, 
307 



Myths and Legends 

cold plains, and they come from a stock that was 
more than half civilized, enjoying, therefore, a 
heritage of refinement and intelligence. When 
Europe awoke to the beauty of the orchid, seekers 
for this strange plant of the air began to invade the 
forests of the Amazon, for rare strains of it com- 
manded little fortunes from rich amateurs. Among 
these hunters was a French botanist, Pierre de 
Vert, a young man who had given his life to study. 
He was retiring, sensitive, and religious, as those 
are apt to be who spend their years in the company 
of woods and mountains, and to him an orchid was 
not merely a flower : it was a problem, a mystery, 
a symbol. 

A Paris nobleman had offered a prize for the most 
beautiful flower that could be found for the Easter 
festival, and knowing Pierre's love for orchids he 
gave him money for a trip to Guiana, together with 
a medal which the Pope had blessed and which 
in case of a pecuniary strait would assure his re- 
turn to France, for its gold value was five hun- 
dred francs. Landing in Cayenne, Pierre set off at 
once for Mount Roraima, of which fabulous tales 
had reached his ears, and, careless of malaria, of 
tormenting insects, of wild beasts, of loathsome 
snakes, he reached the highlands where he hoped 
to find the largest and most striking of the orchids. 
During his search he stumbled on the habitations 
of a rude hill tribe of savages. They were un- 
able to understand why he had come among them ; 
308 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

they had suffered from the treachery and miscon- 
duct of the whites ; they disbelieved him when he 
said that he had travelled all the way from the 
farther shore of the great water to seek flowers, 
because flowers could be had in any place : so they 
took him prisoner, and the unrestrained clamored 
to have him roasted. They searched his pockets 
and took his money. They had seen enough of 
white men to know how many vices could be in- 
dulged v^ith gold. " Is this all ?" asked the chief, 
holding the coins before him. 

Pierre was about to answer, ** Yes," but as he 
placed his hand on his heart he felt the medal 
there. He could not lie. 

** All ?" repeated the Indian. 

Pierre bit his lip and looked into the sky. It 
was hard to be robbed of every coin, and have to 
give up his medal also. 

'^ All ?" demanded the chief again. 

Pierre shook his head, parted his clothing at the 
throat, and revealed the medal. 

** The lad will not lie, yet he is white !" ex- 
claimed one of his captors, in astonishment. 

*' It is his soul that is white," declared another. 

The people would not touch the medal. Pierre 
had won them. They made a bed of fragrant 
leaves for him, and he slept unguarded until the 
call of birds aroused him in the morning. When 
the Indians had shared their meal with him they 
gave back the money they had taken. ** You are 
309 



Myths and Legends 

good," they said. *^ You do not deceive. Keep 
your coins and rest, and we will help you." 

The people dispersed, and did not return until 
night. When they came back they were laden 
with the strangest and most exquisite blossoms, 
whose heavy perfume was almost overpowering. 
One of these was of remarkable size and color, and 
that one, Pierre knew, would win the prize. He 
detached the plant from the tree to which it had 
fastened, and some weeks afterward it bloomed in 
Notre Dame. The wonder and admiration of the 
people were almost reward enough for his toil and 
hardship. With the money he received as a prize 
he returned to Guiana and taught the gospel to the 
Indians. 



THE HONEST MULETEERS 

ROUGH and ignorant as are some of the moun- 
tain men, honesty is no rare virtue. Old 
Jose of Coquimbo had been guide, freighter, and 
messenger across the Cordilleras since boyhood, 
and the priest was not more surely trusted than he. 
The mines had been worked as never before one 
summer, and there were many laborers up there in 
the mountains awaiting their pay. '' It will be a 
heavy bag for you to carry this time, friend Jose," 
said the superintendent. *^ I am putting two hun- 
dred gold doubloons in your charge." 
" They shall be safe with me, senor." 
310 



I 



Beyond Our Borders 

** I know it, Jose. To hide it the better we 
will put half the weight at one end of the bag and 
half at the other, for we can tie the mouth of it 
secure. Now, put it across your mule's back, under 
the saddle and the blanket, so it shall not be seen, 
then wear your longest poncho, and I'll warrant 
there'll be no danger." 

Three thousand dollars in gold is not so great a 
burden, yet it is not a thing to exhibit to the covet- 
ous and lawless ; so the best place for it was under 
the saddle, no doubt. Jose rode away toward the 
snowy peaks ; he reached the desert at the rise of 
the moon and rode on, enjoying the vastness, the 
silence, and the stars until his mule began to go 
heavily. " Anita, girl, we're not so light on this 
trip as usual, eh ? Come, then. We'll rest. There's 
no forage for you but this handful of oats, and no 
water till we reach the hills, but you shall sleep. 
Only, you must wear the saddle this time, for 
there's something under it — aha ! — something to 
make the eyes of the peons sparkle when they shall 
see it." He put his hand under the saddle. Yes, 
the doubloons on the right side were safe. He 
went around to the other side, reached up, and — 
the money was gone ! The string had untied, and 
the gold had been spilt among the desert sands. 
Lost ! And his good name ! Would they not 
believe him to be a thief? Or, if they thought 
him honest, would they ever trust money to him 
again ? His heart sank until he felt a sickness, 
3" 



Myths and Legends 

Nothing could be done until day, and he would 
spend the rest of the night praying that he might 
find the missing gold. With the rise of the sun 
he started back afoot, leading his mule and exam- 
ining every foot of the way. He had gone only 
two or three miles when a cloud of dust appeared 
away out on the plain. It drew nearer. It was a 
pack-train with ten drivers. He knew them all, 
for they had been his pupils in the business, — true- 
hearted lads every one. They were laughing and 
calling. "They would not laugh if they knew 
how ashamed and miserable I am," he said. 

" Ho, friend Jose," called the first, as he galloped 
up to the old man, **why are you pulling so 
long a face ?" 

*^ I have lost half a bag of doubloons, and my 
reputation, and my peace of mind." 

*' I cannot return the peace of mind, but here 
are ten of the doubloons. I found them in the 
sand." 

*^ Thanks to God. My sorrow is by so much 
the less." 

Then came the second muleteer. " Father 
Jose," he cried, *' what is lacking with you ?" 

" Ninety doubloons," said Jose. 

" Tut ! It is only eighty, for here are ten." 

Then followed Domingo and Carlos and the 

rest, each with his question and his ten coins, until 

the last, who had but nine, — for so they had divided 

the treasure. The missing piece had been trodden 

312 



Beyond Our Borders 

into the sand and lost. Between them all they 
made up the hundredth doubloon. Jose went to 
his knees, and with wet eyes raised toward the sky 
he thanked God that his prayer had been heard, 
that neither the treasure nor his honor had been 
lost. The bag was now so tied and sewed and 
twisted that its contents could not possibly be 
spilled again; then, with lightened heart, Jose rode 
on at the head of the train, singing. ** Boys," he 
said, after a time, *^ I taught you to ride, to swim, 
to ford, to pack, to make camp, to splice and hitch, 
and all the rest of it ; but I've got my reward now 
when I find that all of you are honest." 

AIGUERRE'S FIRE 

IN the times when Indians lived in villages built 
on stilts in Lake Maracaibo, thus gaining for 
their province the name of Venezuela (Little 
Venice), there was a farol that hung about the 
southern end of that sheet of water. This " lan- 
tern" appeared to shine through a pale mist and 
often affrighted the people. It has been seen in 
our own day, and ascribed to malignant spirits. 
But the water flames are less malignant than the 
land fire. If any fortune sets you down on the 
Venezuelan plains, beware the ghost of Aiguerre. 
Bitterly has he sufi^ered whose purgatory is the 
pampas, but he tries to make others suffer not less 
bitterly. Lope de Aiguerre, who discovered the 
313 



Myths and Legends 

upper Amazon, was, like too many of the ex- 
plorers from his country and of his day, a harsh 
oppressor, a greedy seeker after others' wealth. 
On his appointment as governor of this southern 
country he bent all public interests to his own ad- 
vantage, tyrannizing over the whites as savagely as 
over the Indians. He had the hate of nearly all 
men, and of heaven, too, for after his death in 
these wilds his soul was compelled to haunt the 
plains, appearing to the lonely cattlemen as the 
will-o'-the-wisp, or Aiguerre's fire, and if you 
draw near you will see, with horror, that in the 
centre of the flame the entrails of the wretch are 
burning. No native in his sober senses will go 
near. He knows the danger. For no sooner is 
such a follower beyond call and sight of his com- 
panions than he falls under the enchantment of the 
light. He forgets time and space, he is hypnotized, 
if you prefer, and rides on and on, until presently 
he finds himself at the brink of a ravine or a 
morass with the light dancing before his face, red, 
confusing, mocking. Lucky indeed is it for him 
if he can pull up his horse or bring himself to a 
stop. Too commonly he pitches into the abyss, 
or sinks into the marsh's black embrace, and if his 
body is ever found it is buried hastily, for the 
people who do that service are quick to get away 
from a spot that has been cursed by another of the 
tragedies of Aiguerre. 



3H 



Beyond Our Borders 

THE AMAZONS 

CERTAIN women of the tribes living along 
the Amazon wear beads of a green stone, 
possibly jade or jadeite, possibly that more showy 
if less valuable mineral, Amazon stone, a variety of 
feldspar. When Cortez landed in Mexico, these 
stones, which were from hearsay thought to be 
emeralds, were worn by the Aztecs, who carved 
them in strange and symbolical forms, such as fish 
and parrots' heads. These ornaments were held 
in great esteem by the natives, who valued them 
more than gold. Their use probably spread from 
Mexico through Peru and so to the Brazils, for the 
women who now wear them say that they had 
them from the first owners by direct inheritance, 
and that they are amulets which preserve them from 
many ills. Orellana, who first ascended the Ama- 
zon, was also the first to tell of the existence of a 
tribe of female warriors in the great wilderness along 
its banks. Certain of the Tupinambas women had 
sworn an oath of chastity, agreeing among them- 
selves to suffer death if they broke the compact. 
They disdained the employments of other women, 
rode horseback astride, after horses had been in- 
troduced into their country, and lived by the hunt, 
like men. They were expert with bow and spear, 
and they had servants to cook and make clothing 
for them. So like were they to the women de- 
scribed by Herodotus as living in Scythia and Libya 
315 



Myths and Legends 

that it was natural to call them Amazons : hence 
the river along which they fished and hunted took 
that name. There are scholars, it is true, who 
declare that the name is Amassona, an Indian word 
meaning boat-destroyer, and applied to the terrible 
bore, or tide avalanche, that is encountered at full 
moon on the lower river. The fierce creatures of 
the Tupinambas shared the toil and peril of war 
with the men of their tribe, but they also fought 
by themselves, battling against male soldiers of the 
enemy with entire fearlessness. 

BOLIVAR AT CARACAS | 

NATURE did not share in the dulness of! 
Lent. On the contrary, she was full of ^ 
promise for Easter joys. Flowers blazed on the 
lower slopes of the Andes, and bright birds flashed 
through the air. Holy Week of 1812 was nearly 
over; the people of Caracas were preparing to 
decorate their altars ; their gatherers were out on 
the hills, collecting orchids and cactus blooms, and 
all was tranquil and beautiful. Two men walked 
apart at the city's edge, one of them tall, dark, 
garbed as a civilian, the other short, slight, strong- 
faced, suggesting, in his uniform, both Jackson and 
Napoleon. They were speaking of the progress 
made by the people in the fight against a foreign 
and monarchical government. Said the tall man, 
** Yet, Simon Bolivar, there are times when I fear. 
316 



Beyond Our Borders 

Of late we often have smoke and dust in the air, 
and I have fancied that I heard faint rumblings 
and felt an ague in the earth. Suppose the masses 
should be told by some fanatic that these were signs 
of the divine wrath against our cause !" 

^* It would be sad. The people are credulous. 
They remember, too, that Caracas has already suf- 
fered from the anger of heaven, as some of them 
phrase it. We are walking at this moment in the 
basin of a lake that disappeared in a night. This 
city may be swallowed up in as short a time. But 
I believe that the just cause wins. Whatever hap- 
pens, liberty will be ours." 

The two men kept for some time in earnest talk, 
not noticing that the sky was becoming overcast 
and smoky, that the sun had grown red, that the 
day had lost its freshness and the very birds were 
uneasy. A portent seemed to be in the air. The 
mountains were fading. The silence and breath- 
lessness had become intense. Sharing in the vague 
apprehension that began to possess all living things. 
General Bolivar and his companion started back 
toward the centre of the town. As he was recog- 
nized, the people cried, ^' The liberator ! The 
liberator !" His strengthening presence gave com- 
fort to them. In the churches the Lenten music 
was low and mournful, and in the dim light of 
their candles they were cavernous and full of mys- 
tery. Hark ! From some unguessed place, in the 
sky or in the bowels of the earth, came a rumbling, 
317 



Myths and Legends 

as of thunder. Then, silence, in which creation 
held its breath to listen. Some of the people left 
the churches, unable to endure the oppression and 
suspense. Bolivar had paused at the cathedral 
door, when, with groan and crash and grinding of 
masonry, the earthquake came. Peaks toppled, 
cliffs broke and slid to their bases, the sea battered 
the coast in stupendous breakers, the air darkened 
to twilight, towers and houses fell, flames began to 
rise among their wrecks, the earth cracked and 
gaped and swallowed people, two volcanoes burst 
their seal of centuries and belched lava, while 
roarings and boomings added to the terror. The 
city melted like wax in the heat. It was soon 
over. Death and desolation are quickly wrought. 
Twelve thousand people were killed. Bolivar's 
heart sank as he looked about him on the panic- 
stricken survivors. In a sort of childlike helpless- 
ness they turned to him, standing on an eminence 
of ruin, and called again, *^ Liberator ! Liberator !'* 
He clambered down to them and urged on the 
work of rescue, with his own hands dragging blocks 
and beams from groaning victims, wiping dust and 
mortar from eyes that stared at the dusky heavens, 
restoring children to parents and binding the hurts 
of the wounded. ''It is the wrath of heaven," 
cried one white-faced man. *' God is against us.'* 
'' Silence !" commanded Bolivar. *' To say that 
God sides with the tyrant is blasphemy. Our city 
is destroyed, but not our freedom. Neither men 

318 



I 
1 



Beyond Our Borders 

nor nature can avail against the right. Cities, 
governments, may fall, but justice, brotherhood, — 
nothing can shake them." 

*^ It is true," cried another. *^ Our priests are 
dead, but God has spared our leader, Bolivar, to 
march with us to victory." 

A wan gleam of the sun, piercing the dreadful 
canopy, lighted the face of the Liberator with a 
halo. 



THE END 



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